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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



POEMS AND ESSAYS 



BY 



ALFRED HITCH 



PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 
BOX 273, STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA 
I92O 









Copyright, j 920 
by Alfred Hitch 



NOV 23 1820 



©CI.A604631 



I want to see, and feel, and know 

Not only what is well; 
I ask not, coward- like, to go 

Blindfolded down to Hell. 

I ask for human life and breath, 
And pure, without alloy, 

Life with the bitterness of death, 
With all its grief and joy. 



CONTENTS 

Poems 

Love 

I Come to Thee 23 

When I Think of Thee 23 

Ulysses 24 

My Favorite Poet 24 

The Faithful 24 

Need 25 

Woman 25 

Weeping Willow 26 

The Flower of Love 26 

From Far Away 26 

The Wedding 27 

The Assignation 27 

Nympholepsy 28 

Love Without a Lover 28 

Memoria 29 

Divorced 29 

Married Love 29 

Love Triumpant 30 

At the Theatre 31 

Summa Summarum 31 

Mater Dolorosa 31 

The Meaning of Love 31 



At the Dance , 2 

Procreation 32 

A Maiden Mortal -><* 

At the Ball 33 

Love and Friendship 33 

Othello-Jove 34 

Modern Love 34 

Her Father's Daughter 34 

The Frailty of Love 3c 

In You 35 

The Parting 35 

Jealousy 35 



Fooled 

Religion 
At Church 
Sacrifice 



The Eucharist 



One World at a Time 
To a Christian 



Mind 

The Truth 
Saint and Sinner 



36 

3« 
33 



The City and Its God 39 

For the Truth 



39 

39 
The Myth of the Soul 4 o 



40 

4i 
Ready-made Religion 4! 

Hell 4I 

4 The Scarlet Letter" 42 

To a Christian Maiden 42 

The Ordination 



42 
43 

43 

43 
Directions For Building 44 



Mortality 44 

Reincarnation 44 

The One Thing Needful 45 

How Shall God Know His Own ? 45 

Carpe Diem 45 

The Individual 46 

God 47 

Fathers and Sons 47 

To Jesus of Nazareth 48 

Nativity Hymn 48 

"Jesus Wept" 49 

Faith 49 

A Challenge 49 

Walt Whitman or Christ ? 50 

"Bishop Brougham's Apology" 50 

My Father 51 

Men 51 

A Devotee 52 

Dies Irse 52 

Materialism 52 

Animal Life 

Chicago Stockyards 53 

November 54 

Fear 54 

To the Horse 55 

To an Elephant 55 

Night 55 

Roosevelt in Africa 56 

Quiet 56 

Fishing 57 

Thanksgiving 57 



The White Badge of Cruelty 58 

Hogs 58 

The Tyrants of the Earth 59 

Henry Bergh 59 

The Praying Mantis 60 

"And God gave Man Dominion" 60 

War 

1914 61 

Conscripts 62 

The Casualty List 62 

The Soldiery 63 

"Where is Thy Brother Abel ?" 63 

The Voice of Our Age 63 

The Tragedy of the Young Men 64 

A Hero 64 

Religion in the Trenches 65 

Love and Loyalty 65 

A Suggestion of the Devil 65 

Crime and Punishment 66 

To the German Emperor 1 6 

Advice to a Soldier 66 

Militarism 67 

The Triumph of Mind 67 

The Price of Valor 67 

The Conquered Country 68 

Miscellaneous 

The New World 69 

Wheels 69 

The City of Unrest 70 

To the Sphinx 70 



At the Inn of Life 7 1 

Agreed 7 1 

Spring 7 2 

A Face in the Glass 72 

To a Butterfly 72 

To a Field of Celery 73 

Hirelings 73 

The Great Divide 73 

To a Boy 74 

An Autumn Thought 74 

Instability 74 

To Double Roses 75 

To a Reformer 75 

Sleep 75 

Eex Scripta 76 

Dispossessed 76 

Ex Parte 76 

The Wreck of the Titanic 77 

At a Social Reception 77 

Gold 77 

Alter Ego 78 

The Overland Limited 78 

The White Eights 78 

Of My Brothers 79 

The Emergence of Man 79 

To the Indian Pipe 79 

A Merry Go-round 80 

Lost Days 80 

In the City 81 

The Dream 81 

Vanitas Vanitatum 82 



To the Sea 82 

From a Car- window 83 

Nature 83 

My Heart and I 84 

Sunday Evening 84 

Wander Song 85 

Hypersensitive 85 

The Unattainable 86 

Alone 86 

To a Baby 86 

In the Slums 87 

Tobacco Smoke 87 

In Extremis 88 

Between the Bays 88 

A Toiler's Conscience 89 

The Aeroplane 89 

Blood 89 

The Beggar 90 

A House Divided Against Itself 90 

Whip-poor-will 90 

Water on the Desert 91 

To a Pine Tree 91 

When Thou art Old 92 

Old Age 92 

Spectres 93 

Empty Bottles 93 

God Said 93 

Rockaby Baby 94 

Microbes 95 

Ivike a Flower 95 

An Invocation to Paternity 96 



The Black Side 9 6 

Revenge 97 

John Doe and Richard Roe 97 

Knights-errant 97 

The Vagabond 9 8 

From the Outside 98 

Streets 99 

Beauty 99 

Wealth and Poverty 100 

The Hardest Thing in the World to Do 100 

A Friend 100 

The Laborer 101 

Master and Servant 101 

Wanderlust 102 

Loneliness 102 

Impasse 102 

The Return 103 

Desire 103 

The Masquerade 103 

At the Road's End 104 

Flowers 104 

My Lost Ideal 105 

Through Life by Train 105 

The Deserted House 106 

A Birth 106 

Death, the Inquisitor 106 

Vain Advice 107 

Imagination 107 

Science 107 

A Camp-meeting Promenade 108 

Limitations 108 



Alfalfa 109 

Thoughts no 

Beauty and Distance no 

Tenants no 

The Sisters of Mercy 11 1 

The Child-king in 

"The Female of the Species" 112 

The Answer 112 

Brothers 113 

Liberty 113 

To Know and Not to Know 113 

The Unpardonable Sin 113 

Forsythia and Daffodils 114 

The Mountain Trail 115 

The Rocky Mountain Columbine 116 

To the California Poppy 116 

Coyote 1 16 

Cause and Effect 1 17 

The Wanderer 1 17 

Elizabeth 1 17 

Nocturne 1 17 

W. C. T. U. 1 18 

An Epitaph 118 

The Drunkard's Toast 119 

The Course of Empire 1 19 

Personal 

To Swinburne 1 20 

To George Sterling 1 20 

To Rudyard Kipling 1 2 1 

To Dante 1 2 t 



G. K. Chesterton 122 

To F. W. H. Myers 122 

Shakespeare and the Baconians 123 

Annie Besant 123 

John Brown 123 

Keats 124 

Izaak Walton 124 

To Joyce Kilmer 125 

To Father Tabb 125 

Thoreau at Walden 126 

To Eugene V. Debs 126 

Ave et Vale 127 

The Iliad 127 

At the Sign of the Lyre 128 

Open House 128 

The Dead Boss 129 



130 



Sold 

Pi,acb 

Spring in Delaware 131 

San Francisco 132 

California 132 

Days on Pnget Sound 132 

Mojave Hills 133 

Chicago 133 

The Desert: Nevada 134 

Casa Grande 134 

The Seven Cities of Cibola 135 

Sunset in Arizona 135 

The Desert: Arizona 136 

An Arizona Toast 136 



Romance in Californina 137 

Essays 

Protoplasm and Consciousness 141 

Morality and Consciousness 141 

Creation and Consciousness 142 

The Hunter-Sportsman 143 

Love and Hate 143 

Matter 144 

Patriotism 145 

True Greatness 146 

Democracy and Autocracy 147 

Notes on Nietzsche 148 

"Man, the Erect" 153 

Carlyle and Hero-worship 154 

The Great Mystery 155 

Studies in Irrationality 155 

Caveat Emptor 156 

Beauty and Pleasure 156 

Life 157 

Food, Clothing, and Shelter 157 

Nature *5 8 

Pragmatism and Truth 159 

Reason and Desire 164 

The Mortality of the Ego 165 

Religion and Woman 167 

Optimism 167 

The Vital Element in Religion 168 

Trees and Ideas 169 

Religion and Morality 169 



Christ and Conventional Religion 170 

Creation and Evolution 173 

"The Rest is Silence" 173 

The Hope of the World 174 

Intolerance 175 

,,The Fear of God" 176 

Skepticism 176 

A Democracy Afraid of Itself 177 

The Human Revolt 178 

Imagination and Desire 178 

The Supernatural 179 

A Metaphysical Dream 179 

Health and Deceit 179 

Poetry 180 

In My Garden 180 

A Plea for the Worst Books 181 

Poets, Past and Present 181 

Working for Wages 182 

The Reformer 182 

The Cigar-hero 183 

The Penitentiary 183 

Marriage 184 

Explanation 184 

War Notes 

War and Consciousness 185 

Arms and the Fool 187 

The Weakness of Force 188 

Preparedness 188 

What the War Teaches 189 

1919 190 

Definition and Suggestion 191 



POKMS 



LOVE 



I COME TO THEE 

I COMK to thee with the yearning 
Of a thousand million loves, 

Out of the infinite loving 
Of life and all that moves. 

I come to thee as the pollen 
The light winds lift and blow 

Comes to the waiting flower — 
O welcome me so ! 



WHEN I THINK OF THEE 

When I think of thee, 

I wonder why men ever tire of love 

And why they ever struggle to get free ? 

I'd go triumphantly to be thy slave 

And find it sweet to die murdered by thee. 



24 IvOVB 

ULYSSES 

Ulyssks, noted for his wisdom, 

Sailing borne from Troy, 
Saw the sirens, Love and Beauty, 

Heard them sing of joy; 

But he stopped not for their singing, 

Nor for pleading eyes, 
Sailed right on and so escaped 

Death, but was he wise ? 

MY FAVORITE POET 

Since she read the cherished volume 
Of my favorite English poet, 

More than ever it is dear. 
As she read the verses over, 
Did she think of me, I wonder, 

As I read and think of her ? 

THE FAITHFUL 

As the kneeling Mussulman 
To Mecca turns to pray, 

So my heart, dear, turns to thee 
And never turns away. 



NEED 



Your need should be my will 

And make me strong 
To master every ill 

All the day long. 

/ need your need of me, darling, 
I need your need of me. 

Your need should be the spur 

To life in me, 
And so help me conquer 

The world for thee. 

/ need your need of me, darling, 
I need your need of me. 



WOMAN 

Hk has no home who has no wife, 

For woman is the home of man. 

There's no one else to love him, 

No one else that can; 

Only woman shares his life, 

Only woman knows; 

He came from woman and to woman goes. 



2.6 IvOVB 

WEEPING WILLOW 

I would I were a willow, planted 

My lady's grave above, 
Slow -growing through the years, outlasting 

The mein'ry of our love. 

I'd grow down in the earth to find her, 

The love love could not save, 
And wind my rooty arms around her 

And weep above her grave. 

THE FLOWER OF LOVE 

Past love hath blossomed, maid, in thee, 

Love red with crime 

And white with jealousy 

And dreamy-eyed with memories, — 

Thou flower of the centuries 

And fruit of time. 

FROM FAR AWAY 

As I walked the streets of this distant city, 
I have missed thee from my side all day ; 

And now darkness falls over land and sea — 
I love thee in dreams and far away. 



LOVE _£T 

THE WEDDING 

Only a year ago he died, 

And today she weds again. 
His children lead the bridal march — 

His children — 

The wedding bells in the church ring out 
Over the grave where her husband lies. 

But there's no protest from the dead, 
From the grave he does not rise. 

"Speak now or forever hold your peace," 
And the dead man does not rise. 

Only a year ago, and today 

To another man his wife is wed. 
If he were not dead, he now would die 

Ay, surely he is dead. 



THE ASSIGNATION 

We met as shadows in the dark 
To purposeless and half-thought deed; 
Yet lo ! the night rang out with it 
And woke the startled day 
And echoes of eternity. 



s8 I«OVB 

NYMPHOLEPSY 

The face of a maiden seen in the street, 
It haunts me wherever I go; 

We never met and shall never meet, 
And it was years and years ago. 

And was she beautiful ? I do not know 
I know that she looked at me 

And I looked into her eyes, and O ! 
All else seemed but as vanity. 

I walk the streets when the day is done 
And watch the faces go by — 

A thousand faces, but never the one 
For which I pine and die. 

LOVE WITHOUT A LOVER 

To love without a lover, 

How dull the days go by, 
The days that bring him never, 

The nights that wait and sigh. 

If you should see my lover, 

O little birds that fly, 
Tell him the years are passing, 

Tell him I fade and die. 



LOVE 29 

MEMORIA 



Years come and go, still bringing 
New fashions and new themes, 

But she forever reigneth 

Queen of my heart and dreams. 

As perfume of dead roses 
Shut in old books of rhyme, 

She lives in memory only, 
Beyond the reach of time. 



DIVORCED 

Divorced from husband and wife, 
But not from father and mother; 
In your children ye shall go 
Down the centuries together. 



MARRIED LOVE 

When deepened and confined, 

The w T ide and shallow stream that runs to waste 

Is turned into a torrent, so love, 

Confined within the channel of our lives, 

Conserves its strength and passion through the years. 



30 LOVE 

LO VK TRIUMPHANT 

Thb world grows chill and overcast — 
Hold me fast, Love, hold me fast ! — 
Say not farewell, but hold me fast 
Lest Death be lord of love at last — 
Hold me fast, Love, hold me fast ! 

The ground is frozen hard, and white 

Hold me tight, Love, hold me tight ! 

The wind is howling through the night; 

Thou art fading from my sight 

Hold me tight, Love, hold me tight ! 

I know that in the coffin-chest 



Hold me, press me to thy breast ! 
I can never, never rest 
Except thou fold me to thy breast — 

Clasp me, fold me to thy breast ! 



The world grows chill and overcast- 

Hold me fast, Love, hold me fast ! 

Say not farewell, but hold me fast 
Lest Death be lord of love at last — 
Hold me fast, Love, hold me fast ! 



LOVE J* 

AT THE THEATRE 

Before the world in audience met, 
As Carmen or as Juliet, 
You play a part and seem to be — 
But be your own dear self to me, 

SUMMA SUMMARUM 

Upon the earth that holds thee now. 

Or in the Heaven above, 
There's naught so beautiful as thou 

And naught so sweet as love. 

MATER DOLOROSA 

The girlish dream of happiness 

In wife and mother dies, 
For love begins in selfishness 

And ends in sacrifice. 

THE MEANING OF LOVE 

Our love, dear, for each other is a child 
That will care nothing for us. 



32 LOVE 

AT THE DANCE 

The sexual organs of the tulip tree 
She has pinned to her maidenly breast; 

Their heavy perfume pervades the room 
And fills the soul with unrest. 

The delicate arms and heaving chest, 

Plump shoulders bare to the waist, 
For a moment are pressed to the manly breast, 

Then swung for others to taste. 

She would barely speak should we meet on the street 

When tomorrow's sunlight gleams; 
But tonight I can clasp her in a lover's grasp, 

And clasp her still in my dreams. 



PROCREATION 

From the sexual embrace of the night, 

Each morning I arise immortal. 

This is the perpetual fountain of youth, 

"The resurrection of the body and life everlasting." 

It paints the plumage and tints the petal 
And fills the world with its fragrance, 
The blossoms, the flowers, are sexual, sensual, 
All pale with passion or blushing with love. 



LOVH U 

A MAIDEN MORTAL 

I would not court the lily. 

Nor see an an gel home; 
Let flowers wed with flowers 

And Heaven keep her own. 

I love a maiden mortal, 
Eve's latest daughter, 

With all her mother's sin; 
I love her faults and follies, 
Her pimples and her freckles, 

The moJe upon her chin. 

AT THE BALL 

What means the rose in thy attire ? 

Are roses, dear, the fashion — 
Flame-colored petals of desire, 

Red riot of passion ? 

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP 

IT was not love, he asked, but friendships 

And so went lonely to the end; 
For one may have a dozen lovers 

And not a single friend. 



34 love 

OTHELLO-LOVE 

False to thee ? Ah, vain Moor ! 

The question is not whether she were false to thee, 

But whether she were true unto herself. 

And jealousy's not murder; one may be jealous 
And still not be a murderer. 

There are whose very love is criminal — 
Othello-love, that kisses and then kills. 

MODERN LOVE 

Although she left me for a greater love, 

And though my life went out with her, 

I opened wide the door 

And blessed her ere she went. 

Love shah not make 

Me tyrant or a murderer. 

I want no love that is not free to love. 

HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER 

I'd have thee, dear, all woman; 
I speak of love, but falter when — 
When your dead father looks at me 
Out of your eyes. 



■ LOVE 35 

THE FRAILTY OF LOVE 

Love is as frail as sweet, 

Delicately agile; 
The lily on its stalk 

Is not more fragile. 

'Tis the slight spirit of dreams — 

Ah, who can grasp it ? 
No fleshly lip can kiss 

Nor arm can clasp it. 

Love is too frail for work 

And rough endeavor. 
Sighing, bid love adieu, 

'Tis thine forever. 



IN YOU 

In you, 

Life hath clothed herself in beauty, 

Desire hath grown to love — 

O daughter of the past and mother of the future ! 



?& LOVE 

THE PARTING 

Love is no more a child 

And we no more are children; 

The love our youth beguiled 

Suits not the man and woman. 

Once we could agree, 

But time hath made us strangers; 

Alas ! for you and me 

The dream of youth is over. 

'Tis time to say good-by, 

And now, before we cry, 

Good-by, good-by forever. 



JEALOUSY 

By the love she hath for thee, 
She can love some other man. 

As rare things come packed carefully, 
So love comes wrapped in jealousy. 



FOOLED 

We marry for love and live — for children. 
Nature, to get her work done, how she fools us 



RELIGION 



I have no heart to preach, or teacA, 

Or argue my belief; 
I would not change a single thought 

Nor break a single leaf. 

I only write asfrie?id to friend, 

As one in foreign land 
Writes to a friend across the wyrldL 

That hi may understand. 



39 RELIGION 

AT CHURCH 

The sabbath comes at length, 
The church-bells ring the date, 
And thitherward repair 
The young men in their strength, 
The maidens, slim and fair, 
And old folk, scant of breath, — 
All seeking respite from the fate 
That threatens everywhere, 
The tragedy of life and death, 
Around, beneath, and overhead; 

And let us leave them there 

The living praying to the dead. 

SACRIFICE 

Men came to sacrifice to God. 
Some brought the gift of other lives, 
Dumb, helpless cattle, children, wives, 
And some, ill passions and desire9, 
And gave to sacrificial fires; 
But no one brought his soul, none gave 
Himself. God answered from the grave: 
"Ah, vain the gifts your fears devise 

To cheat the purpose in ye furled 

Yourselves shall be the sacrifice 
Upon the altar of the world. ' ■ 



RELIGION 39 



THE CITY AND ITS GOD 

Broadway — 

Saint Paul's and Trinity. 

O city loud with strife, 

Is this thy God, 

The troubled, pale, ascetic Christ, 

Who entered not the lists of life, 

But turned aside 

To muse on death and destiny ? 

O city of industry, 

Is this thy God ? 



FOR THE TRUTH 

Though God himself a devil were 
And Truth itself should die of fear, 
Still I'd brave Hell and shout and roar, 
The Truth , the 7 ruth forevermore \ 



THE EUCHARIST 

The snowy altar cloth is laid, and thereupon 
The feast of Christ is spread with benediction; 

But I 1 have no appetite for Christian food, 

For bread that tastes of lJesh and wine that tastes of 

blood. 



*) 



RELIGION 

THE MYTH OF THE SOUL 

A winged Thottght of Desire, 
Fast hid in a cell of the brain, 

Till the cell is crumbled to dust, 
When it flies on its way again. 

It comes as a dream in the night 

- ^> 

And goes as a thought of day, 
Invisible, impalpable, known 
In no conceivable way. 

And this is the myth of the soul 

That flatters the human ear. 
'Tis as old as man and will last 
As long as desire and fear. 

ONE WORLD AT A TIME 

The Church it holds for future use 

The present and the real; 
And while the Christian kneels in prayer 

The thieves break through and steal. 

Let's live today and for today, 

Live for our country and our homes, 

And if tomorrow comes, why, then 
We'll live tomorrow — when it comes. 



RELIGION 41 

TO A CHRISTIAN 

■ 

You say, O friend, that God is love, 

But when you turn and kneel, 
'Tis not to love, but tyranny, 

That you make your appeal. 

Praise God for favors past, you sing, 

And those to be received; 
Praise for reward is flattery, 

And can God be deceived ? 

READY-MADE RELIGION 

Men buy religion as they buy 
Their clothing, ready-made; 
But they were naked else, 
Soul-naked, shivering and afraid. 
Then let them buy cheap clothing 
For cheap souls. 



HELL 

If men of every age and race 
Could come together in one place, 
Mediaeval, modern — well, 
They'd need no fire to make it Hell. 



RELIGION 

"THE SCARLET LETTER" 

The law made sacred grew a sin 
To plague and torture Hester Prynne; 
Virtue itself became a crime 
By making it holy and divine. 

Zealots harm more than ribalds can, 
For Virtue turned a Puritan 
And hardened into cruelty 
Drives us to hate morality. 

worship, sacredness, divinity — 
The cardinal sins of Christianity ! 

TO A CHRISTIAN MAIDEN 



Ye meet in secret prayer, enticed 

By love of the divine, 
Spouse of thy lord, the Jesus Christ 

My Jove would be a crime. 



THE ORDINATION 

The Church has gained a priest to 
." Live on the Christian plan; 
The maid has lost a lover 
And life has lost a man. 



RELIGION 43 

— — -. -* II ■■■■ I ■ ■ I ■■ ■ I ■!■ - — ■ ■■■ — M il ■■N ^ ■ 

MIND 



ThekK is no trace of God as mind 

In all creation's laws; 
Mind is the long result of life, 

And not its moviug cause. 

Bom to the freedom of the earth, 
And men without a peer, 

We make us gods of lesser things 
To worship and to fear. 



THE TRUTH 

No opium-dream of faith for me; 
I will not drug my soul with faith nor be 
A coward to the truth. But give me life 
And the religion of the brave, the Truth - 
The Truth, although it be a sword 
And I die on the point ! 



SAINT AND SINNER 

Each hold the laws of life as naught 

But human vanities, 
The saint, the sinner, — the pales of thought. 

The two insanities. 



44 RELIGION 

DIRECTIONS FOR BUILDING 

Build the house of life 
On the Rock of Fact, 
The foundation stone 
Of the universe. 

Who builds on faith 
Builds castles in the air. 



MORTALITY 

Lifk goes weeping to the grave; 

Without death, where would the pathos be t 

Mortality gives significance to life 

And makes the hours precious; 

It gives us sympathy for suffering 

And relief in tears. 

Who goes with me to death ? 



REINCARNATION 

Ay, we shall be made flesh again 
In lives and ways not now believed; 

As mice we shall come back at night 
And haunt the houses where we lived. 



RELIGION 45 



THE ONE THING NEEDFUL 

The preacher prays God for all things, 
From sinners saved to napkin-rings; 
But strange, of all his wants immense, 
He never prays for common-sense. 

This one thing needful could we share, 
There'dbe no use for further prayer, 
And Hell would lose and Heaven win. 
For want of common-sense we sin. 



HOW SHALL GOD KNOW HIS OWN ? 

The man that suffered on the rack 

And he that bound him down, 
Each followed duty and the right 

How shall God know his own ? 



CARPE DIEM 

We have learned that in death there's no waking, 

So in life there shall be no 6leep; 
We will live life out in the living 

And in death have nothing to weep. 



46 RELIGION 

THE INDIVIDUAL 

Thus cries the individual 
In his atomic sorrow, 

Foreseeing his decay: 
"I want to live forever, 
And if I die tomorrow, 

Why live a single day?" 

Desire is the unconscious 
Law of force and matter 

In all that creep and crawl. 
Wert thou not filled with longing 
To live and live forever, 

Thou wouldst not live at all. 

The earth was old with aeons 
When thou wert young beside thee 

Warm Mesozoic sea; 
And still the aeons crumble 
And still thou art immortal 

In thy mortality. 

Life's infinite progression, 

And through rebirth and shifting 

Evolves the greater mind; 
So thou must live and perish 
That thon mayst live more grandly 

In lives thou leav'st behind. 



RELIGION 4-7 



Still cries the individual 
In his atomic sorrow: 

"The thought that I must die 
O'er-baJances all others; 
'Tis I would live forever, 

'Tis I, and I, and I !" 



GOD 

God is neither love nor hate — 
God is Fate. 

Beyond our joy and grieving, 
Beyond our prayer and praising, 
He evermore abides; 
God of the good and evil, 
God of the Turk and Christian- 
He never taketh sides. 



FATHERS AND SONS 

The day our parents died, we buried their lives witU 

them. 

And broke their household gods and set up to be men; 

Yet still for us, for whom they once did toil and save, 

Dead faces look reproach and hands reach from the 

grave. 



48 RELIGION 

TO JESUS OF NAZARETH 

Thou lonely one, the eternal outcast of mankind — 

Killed for a man and worshiped for a God. 

Lonely thou didst live and lonely die, 

And lonelier still thy state, if thou couldst know, 

For the unintelligent praise of men 

Hurts worse than their senseless scorn. 

Christ, it must be lonely to be worshiped ! 

Thou wert man and touched with race, 
And still men crucify thee in thy race, 
Still crucify thee every day anew, 
Even they, thy worshipers. 
Christ, it must be lonely to be worshiped ! 

NATIVITY HYMN 

In thee, O new-born child, I see 
Man's immortality 
New -risen from the bath of birth 
And savior of the earth. 

This is that natal morn 
The wise men sought afar. 
Behold ! the night is vanquished 
And in the east a star. 

Unto us a child is born 

And Christ is risen from the dead. 



RBUGION 49 

"JESUS WEPT" 

What we love and comprehend 
Is not the Christ, but weeping friend, 
Not that Lazarus who slept 
Awoke, but this, that "Jesus wept." 

And still death takes the fair and brave 

I weep with Jesus at the grave. 



FAITH 

"Why faith when we have reason ?" 
And Religion, a woman dressed in mourning, replied: 
4 'To believe that God is good, in man and immortality, 
We need faith." 
Ay, we need faith indeed ! 



A CHALLENGE 

By nineteen centuries of war and hate, 
Where is thy boasted Jove of neighbor, Rome ? 
By all the hungry thousands on the streets, 
Where is thy self-denial, O Christendom ? 



50 RgUGION _ 

WALT WHITMAN OR CHRIST ? 

Christ preached the life to come, cot life; 
Heaven, not the world; the ideal, not the real. 

He disbelieved in life and gave his life to save it 

O noble unbeliever ! 

Whitman believed in life, 

Not merely this life or that life, 

Not merely my life or thy life, but life ! — 

Life without qualification or limitation, 

Without addition or elimination — life ! 

O Whitman, the supreme and profound believer in lifet 

Dost thou believe in life with Whitman 
Or disbelieve with Christ ? Dost thou believe in life? — 
Life carnivorous, omnivorous ? its evil and its good ? 
The saint, the sinner? the murderer and the murdered? 
Dost thou believe in life ? 



"BISHOP BROUGHAM'S APOLOGY" 

O MERCENARY, doubting bishop, ye 
Argue that the Church stands equally 
For the believer and the doubter; true, 
But not the disbeliever, add thereto. 



RELIGION 51 



MY FATHER 

My father was a Roundhead captain, 
Of serious thought and surly mien. 

For him, there was no chance or happen 
And no expedient, I ween. 

He could not put by wrong and sorrow, 
Make merry in the House of Death; 

He felt the shadow of tomorrow 
In slower pulse and shorter breath. 

He hated as he loved and evil 

Knew the tremendous blows he dealt. 

He could not be both plain and civil, 
But .spake the hot words that he felt. 

He was a worker and a faster, 

Who thought it sin to loaf or play; 

No silly clown was he or jester, 
No masquer at life's holiday. 



MEN 

"We're men, and boast our manhood." Ayjorsooth, 

Men enough to war and will, 

Men enough to fight and kill; 
But are ye men enough to know the truth ? 



52 RBUGION 

A DKVOTEE 

She reads and prays in reverence and devotion pale, 
For long disease hath left her sallow features, body- 
frail; 
Yet sorrow hath its recompense, and she doth gain 
A sweet seraphic peace, renouncing joy, resigned to 

pain. 

She hath the calm and patience of infinitude 
And moves as though she were immortal. Nothing 

can intrude 
Upon the still life of the soul that's here interred — 
The passions of the world, like winds in distant forests, 

heard. 

DIES IRM 

When the accusing faces of his creatures 
Shall stand before God in judgment, 
Heaven and earth shall be no more 
And God himself shall flee, a shrieking maniac, 
Into the night of eternity ! 

MATERIALISM 

We are all materialists, 

For we must be materialists to live; 

And what is spirit but the ghost of matter ? 



ANIMAL LIFE 



CHICAGO STOCKYARDS 

HbrB life is driv'n to slaughter 
And dies without a tear; 

Cain kills his brother Abel 
And there is none to hear. 

I think with Machavelli, 

Amid the bloody reek, 
That might, not right, is final. 

11 'Tis miser'ble to be weak." 

And still they come by thousands. 
The helpless forms of life, 

And in their throats he plunges 
The sharp two-edged knife. 

His flesh and blood relation 

He murders in a trice 
That men may live upon them — 

Say, is life worth the price ? 



54 ' ANIMAL I/IFE 



NOVEMBER 

November comes in sullen mood 

And takes from life its green defense; 

And now begins, in field and wood, 
' 'The slaughter of the innocents. ' ' 

Man feels the savage in him stir, 
An instinct deeper than his race, 

Impels him forth to run with hounds 
And follow in the cruel chase. 

Man, ere he had to manhood grown, 
Ere he had learnt to build and plow, 

Took other life to save his own 
And lived upon the hunt, but now 

No longer hunts for food or place, 
Yet with his dog he follows still 

The fierce excitement of the chase, 
The bloody pleasure of the kill. 

FEAR 

Pear gave the antelope its speed, 

The bird its wings, 
And half the world is saved by flight 

And fear of things. 



ANIMAI, WFB 55 



TO THE HORSB 

Thy harnessed strength, strength shod with speed, 

Is slave to man's desire and need, 

A«d, wanting thee, we still had been 

A forest savage clothed in skin. 

Thy harnessed strength has been our strength, 

This strength has made us gods at length, 

But what to thee thy workmanship, 

Still pulling thy load beneath the whip ? 

TO AN ELEPHANT 

How strange thou seernest to our eyes, 
Amorphous, cumbrous, monstrous size, 
A mountain of flesh from tropic palms. 
With scent of sandalwood and balms; 
And sad thou art, in mien and mood, 
With sorrows older than the flood. 

NIGHT 

The strong were the lords of the day, 

So the weak, they hid in the night, 

But the strong, they tracked and pursued them, 

Pursued them into the night; 

And deeds of terror are done there, 

Under the cover of darkness, 

Under the shadow of night. 



56 ANIMAI, UFB 



ROOSKVELT IN AFRICA 

The primal instincts of a race 
That lived upon the cruel chase, 
The lust for blood, the greed for spoil, 
Have made a joy of arduous toil 
That builds not, lifts not, but destroys, 
Unthinking as an idle boy's. 

God hath no favorites in his plan, 
But all are equal, beast and man, 
The beast that dies, the man that slays, 
Both struggling in the path of days, 
The beast that kills to live and feast, 
The man because he once was beast. 



QUIET 

Though quiet are the fields and woods, 
'Tis not the quiet of peace that's there, 

Where the rabbit lives by stealth 
And the red fox has his lair. 

There is blood upon the fern, 
Bones a-bleaching on the hill, 

Where the hunt was yesterday 
And the red fox had his fill. 



ANIMAL UFE 57 



FISHING 

O sweet and cool is the summer breeze 

Over the morning bay ! 
A push from shore and a pull at the oars, 

And we are off for fishing today. 

A jerk on the line, a flash in the air — 

"A bite !" But O the pain 
Of a floundering, dying fish in the boat 

Gasping for breath in vain ! 

From its humid, bulging eyes, 
What a human, pitiful look ! 

'Tis life ! O God ! 'tis I myself 
Impaled on the end of a hook ! 

O cool and sweet is the summer breeze 

Over the morning bay ! 
But pull for the shore, O sailor lads, 

We'll fish no more today. 



THANKSGIVING 

Today we thank God eating turkey; 

I wonder if our thanks are heard, 
If God cares only for mankind, 

L,ike man, and nothing for the bird. 



5g ANIMAL LIPB 



THE WHITE BADGE OF CRUELTY 

To the egrets' breeding ground 
Came the hunter, stealing round; 
Killed them by the hundreds there, 
Fluttering helpless in the air; 
Left the young to stretch and cry 
Vainly to the pitiless sky; 
And 'twas done, this cruel act, 
To decorate my lady's hat. 

Tender-hearted, thoughtless, vain, 
Weeping o'er another's pain, 
While she wears remorselessly 
The white badge of cruelty. 



HOGS 

Johnson feeds his hog to fatness 

For the the killing in the fall. 
To the pen he comes and feeds him 

As he answers to his call, 
Looks and smiles his satisfaction, 

And the hog, he grunts in kind — 
Neither seeing, neither knowing, 

They alike are brute and blind. 



ANIMAL I*IFS 59 



THE TYRANTS OF THE EARTH 

Destruction waits upon our steps, 

In all our paths and roads, 
'Mong weak inhabitants of earth 

That dwell in frail abodes. 

We maim or kill, for food or sport, 

All other life on earth; 
If to be brutal makes the brute, 

Why claim a higher birth ? 

Flesh is flesh and blood is blood, 

Whate'er the lineament; 
Though life and life may differ, yet 

They are not different. 

We kill our brother in the brute, 

We kill our brother, then 
Sit down to eat his flesh and ask 

The grace of God. Amen. 

HENRY BERGH 

Founder of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 

A?iimals. 

An advocate before the Throne of Life, 
He pled for them that could not plead, 

Came with entreaty to the blind that kill 
From the dumb that bleed. 



6o ANIMAI, IvlFK 



THE PRAYING MANTIS 

Men named thee praying mantis fair, 
For thou seem'st to be at prayer, 

And so thou art, when all is said, 
A-preying for thy living food; 
And prays not man, too, in this mood, 

"Give U6 this day our daily bread ?" 



"AND GOD GAVE MAN DOMINION" 

Their destiny is in his hand 
And live and die at his command 

The cattle on a thousand hills. 
Unfeeliaig as the senseless stone 
And blind to every want except his own, 

He kills and knows not that he kills. 



WAR 



1914 

The blood of the fathers still 

Runs in the veins of their sons, 
And they rise to do the will 
Of death and the deadly guns. 

Like the phantoms of the night, 
Like the ghosts of the past, they .seem, 

For they know not why they fight, 
And they fight like men in a dream. 

They only know they must fight, 
And the day shall find them brave, 

And they shall sleep at night 

With their forebears in the grave.. 



62 WAR 

CONSCRIPTS 

Sent by our parents and our sweethearts, 
Sent by our country to the grave, 

We have no chance to shirk or falter, 
We have no choice but to be brave. 

We hear the nearing roar of battle 
And see by night its ruddy glow, 

And yet we turn not back nor linger; 
Fate drives us onward; we must go. 

And on the eve of morrow's fighting, 
And as the hour approaches nigh, 

Our last thoughts are of friends and lovers. 
it was their will and we must die; 
Fate drives us onward and we go. 

THE CASUALTY LIST 

To be an American citizen, 

It was no Irifling thing for them; 

We others live, the merchant thrives, 

But they — they paid for it with their lives. 

A hundred more dead in the fight, 
And still no victory in sight, 
A hundred more dead, bitter cost ! 
Whoever wins, now, they have lost. 



WAR 63 

THE SOLDIERY 

They fight with bodies, for they have no souls, 

With bullets in default of minds; 
Yet who would grudge them fame and honor-rolls, 

For virtue is of many kinds ? 

And though in higher, nobler actions they 

May fail, yet not in hardihood, 
The brutal heroes of a brutal day, 

The chivalry of flesh and blood. 

"WHERE IS THY BROTHER ABEI<?" 

"Where is thy brother Abel ?" 
"Am I my brother's keeper?" 

Cain answered God. 
And still, like Cain, men murder, 
"Am I my brother's keeper ?" 

Still answer God. 

THE VOICE OF OUR AGE 

The guns, they speak for us, 

The voice of our age, 
The metallic thunder 

Of unreasoning rage. 



64 WAR 

THE TRAGEDY OF THE YOUNG MEN 

Dead by hundreds and by thousands, 
Dead the young men in their prime, 

Dead upon the field of battle, 
Dead and lost to future time. 

Lost the pick of mind and muscle 
Out of which the race is built; 

Ay, the white race shall be whiter 
For the red blood that was spilt. 

Write it down for future ages 

On the page of history, 
Write in blood, Life was the lose? 

And Death won the victory. 



A HERO 

Here's to the soldier-hero 
Witb cross of honor won in 

Dishonorable war. 
To prove the man, it needs not 
The cause be just, for folly 

Or crime will go as far. 



WAR 65 

RELIGION IN THE TRENCHES 

You, priest, who come to preach of sacrifice 

To us, the soldiers in the trench, 

We who, without a thought of future life, 

Beyond the reach of all reward, 

Throw our lives into the breach 

And die for country. And you — 

No man e'er died for his religion, 

And to be good, you must be paid. 

Go hence, for shame. It is for us to teach 

And you to learn. 

LOVE AND LOYALTY 

To prove their love and loyalty, 

The soldiers slay and then are slain, 

So, lacking consciousness, their love 
And loyalty are given m vain; 

Not only in vain, but when too late 

They look, for all the world, like hate. 

A SUGGESTION OF THE DEVIL 

The devil whispered in the ear of man, 
"To prove your courage, you must fight." 
And so man fought, and killed — his brother. 



66 WAR 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 

You, Emperor, who set wheels of war in motion 

And nation onto nation hurled, 

And who have written your imperial will 

With the heart-blood of a million men, 

The groans of dying soldiers, the cry 

Of widows and orphans is in your ears, 

And you — you live and laugh just as before. 

What punishment would be the greatest 
And fit for such enormity ? 
That you might have the sense to feel it, 
But that can never be. 



TO THE GERMAN EMPEROR 

Doubting themselves, the people made you king 
To think and choose for them, and you chose war. 
Not only you have failed them, but you mar 
Their faith in something greater than themselves. 

ADVICE TO A SOLDIER 

O soldier, trust not in your cause, 

But trust in your artillery, 
And pray not lest you should arouse 

The gods and lose the victory. 



WAR 6f 

MILITARISM 

Napoleon, Caeser, all the generals 
Who fought for glory fought and won in vain; 
For time shall turn their fame to infamy, 
Break down their statues in the parks and raze 
Their tombs, and they shall die a second time, 
Be thrust out with the mammoth and the saurian, 
The monsters of the ancient world. 

THE TRIUMPH OF MIND 

When will the wars be ended 
And their kingdoms overthrown ? 

When the Brute is dead buried 
And the Mind comes to its own. 

When will the night be ended, 

The secret of the night be known ? 

In the sunlight of Reason tomorrow 
When the Mind comes to its own. 

THE PRICE OF VALOR 

A fifteen-monthly wage 

'Tis how the soldiers fare. 
Ay, bravery is cheap; 

'Tis common-sense that's rare. 



68 WAR 

THE CONQUERED COUNTRY 

Spring comes back to the country, 

The soldiers from defeat; 
O cover, Spring, with blossoms 

The scene of their retreat. 

The breeze of morn blows gently, 

Blow gently, Winds of Fate; 

Within the conquered country 

Smoulders the brand of hate. 



MISCELLA N EO US 



THE NEW WORLD 

New world, they call it, and expect 

From us new thoughts and rhymes, and yet 

We are our old world fathers' sons 

And in our veins their blood still runs; 

In life we play the same old part, 

The same love stirs within our heart, 

The same old ache, the same old pain ■ 

Man travels from himself in vain. 



WHEELS 

Wheels ! wheels ! wheels ! 
For Man, the Traveler, 
Down the road of the world. 

But the world is round like the wheels, 
And "around" is a road that leads nowhere. 



J«> MISCELLANEOUS 

THE CITY OF UNREST 

In the Valley of Illusion 
Lies the City of Unrest, 

With blue mountains m the distance 
And a road into the west. 

There the sun is paler, dimmer, 
Than the liquid moon at night, 

And the etars sbine in the daytime 
With a preternatural light. 

And that city's ay distracted, 

And shall be eternally, 
With the noise of preparation 

And the stir of things to be. 

Travelers are leaving ever 
By that road on far-off quest, 

For the mountains seem to beckon, 
Shadowy -like, into the wesfc. 



TO THE SPHINX 

O Spirit of the Changeless Past, 

What think'st thou of our present state? 

Thou look'st quite through us, and beyoml - 
The eyes of Death gazing at Fate. 



MISCELLANEOUS ft 



AT THE INN OF IJflB 

O cosmic travelers 

Met at the Inn of Life 
From windy roads of space 

And dusty fields of strife ! 

Today we meet as men, 
And have we met before ? 

And shall we meet again 
When we are men no more ? 

When you are no longer you 

And I am no longer I, 
In what guise shall we meet 

On land, in sea, or sky ? 

1 he Toast 

Here's to that meeting, friend. 
On land, in sea, or sky, 

When you are no longer you 
And I am no longer I. 



AGREED 

They were always agreed that something was wroi^g*. 
But what the wrong was, could never agree. 



J 2 MISCELLANEOUS 

SPRING 

'Tis spring again in the valley; 

The lilacs bloom as of yore; 
The spring comes back to the country, 

But the dead return no more. 

'Tis spring again in the valley; 

The swallows come back as of yore 
And build their ne6ts in the chimneys, 

But the dead return no more. 

A FACE IN THE GLASS 

Thk lady looked at her face in the glass, 
And smiled to see that she was fair; 

The lady smiled at her face in the glass 
And all her wealth of golden hair. 

But that was a long, long time ago 

(And time is thing no one can trust); 
The lady's been dead for many a year; 
The city she lived in has fallen to dust. 

TO A BUTTERFLY 

Thou winged, fluttering dream of the worm, 

Man's symbol of immortality, 

Frail as his hope, brief as a summer's day ! 



MISCELLANEOUS 73 



TO A FIELD OF CELERY 

I share thy green life, blind and mute, 

In the soft, moist earth and sun-warmed air. 

I feel the rain about the root, 

The deadly fungi on thy leaves 

As on my heart. 

We are mutual friends and our fate is one, 
Never to flower and come to seed, 
Used for ends that are not our own. 

My soul has gone into thy stalks and leaves 
To be hawked and sold in the vegetable mart 
With cabbage and beets, 
To wither and perish with thee. 



HIRELINGS 

We are the hirelings, men who know 
The desolation of chill dawns 
That call us to another's work 
And the black night that covers all. 

THE GREAT DIVIDE 

Between us the impassible barrier of Mind; 
I cannot go to you and you cannot come to me. 



£4 MISCELLANEOUS 



TO A BOY 

O BAGSR youth a-going 

For to see and know 
Into the future, 

Where I cannot go ! 

Today moves toward tomorrow, 
The thought moves in the mind, 

But time that takes thee forward 
Will leave me behind. 



AN AUTUMN THOUGHT 

The wind blew chill o'er the bare fields, 
I shivered and a sudden fear 

Gripped at my heart — what if the spring 
Should not return again next year ! 



INSTABILITY 

I fbel the earth move under me at every step, 

And I am like a mouse upon a moving disc 

That slips beneath him as he runs, 

Runs and advanceth not one step. 

The earth, unstable, moves beneath my feet 

And everything I hold to, breaks. 



MISCELLANEOUS 75 



TO DOUBLE ROSES 

Perverted beauty, sterile, futile, 

Cut roses in a va9e — 
O gelded flowers of Art and Science 

That made and claim your petaled grace f 

O dream ye yet of love's fruition 

That sweetens still the summer's breath ? 

Life beautiful unto no purpose, 
Love beautiful in death ! 



TO A REFORMER 

The wrong, you say, is this or that, 
Some law of state or pelf. 

O friend, it is not this or that 
That's wrong, but life itself. 



SLEEP 

Morn calls; the sleepers drowsily protest. 
But there will come no rousing morn when we 
Discard the warm flesh garments of our life 
And in the night of death, stripped to the bone. 
Lie down to centuries of sleep. 



76 MISCELLANEOUS 

LEX SCRTPTA 

Though from the truth itself you make a 
Law by which to live and die, 

You will surely mar or turn it 
To a vice or to a lie. 

Life is changing and evolving, 
And no two lives are the same, 

And no general A can measure 
Out each individual blame. 

DISPOSSESSED 
White took and made their own 

A. 

This, the Indians' ancient home. 
Dazed and homeless, see them stand, 
Aliens in their native land ! 



EX PARTE 

'Tis well, I know, and right, indeed, 
To side with party and to lean, 

To fight for nation, hold to creed, 
And yet how littte and how mean ! 



MISCEIXANBOUS JJ 

THE WRECK OF THE TITANIC 

To the saving of the women, 

Their last thoughts were given and planned; 
And they died like men, died bravely. 

To the music of the band. 

And we, too, are shipwrecked travelers, 

Helpless, drowning on the land. 
Let us die like men, die bravely, 

To the music of the band. 

AT A SOCIAL RECEPTION 

Tonight they've tacitly agreed 
To lay aside their loves and hates 
And meet upon the neutral ground 
Of triviality, — 
To talk and yet say nothing, 
To laugh when one would cry, 
To carry life off with a jest 
For an hour and say good-by. 

GOLD 

Day coins itself in sunset gold, 
Night-buried in the distant west , 

And we who bought the day and sold — 
Have we like gold unto our rest ? 



MISCELLANEOUS 



AI/TER EGO 

Not for ourselves the world is won, 
Not for ourselves we live and die, 

But for some dear, beloved one, 

Known or unknown, or far or nigh. 

The book we read, the words we write, 

One knows and shares our thought and view, 

Seen or unseen in the daylight, 
Known or unknown to me or you. 



THE OVERLAND LIMITED 

From the past we've taken flight 

And we are rushing through the night 

And on into tomorrow. 

O train into the future ! 

O future dark with fate ! 

To what end are we rushing 

And what tomorrows wait ? 

THE WHITE LIGHTS 

O The lighted streets and the lighted stage t 
O Youth and Beauty, the night and the age ) 
The music calls and the white lights glow 
And life is new; come, let us go ! 



MISC BIX ANSOUS f^ 



OF MY BROTHERS 

Otf my brothers in the strife — 

How each one became the fate 
Dreadful to some other life — 

Seeing which, I was all hate. 

Of my brothers — how their love. 

Blundering in a night of fears, 
Was the hate of each that strove — 

Feeling which, I was all tears. 

THE EMERGENCE OF MAN 

When the groping God had blundered 

Blind into man, 
The earth was torn with battle 

And the red blood ran, 
When talon, tusk, and beak had blossomed 

In the skull of man, 
When the groping God had blundered 

Blind into man. 

TO THE INDIAN PIPE 

WmTB,, like the flesh of man, 

Like man, a parasite, — 

Thou naked plant, half -bidden among the leaves* 

Didst thou, too, fall through sin ? 



So MISCELLANEOUS 

A MERRY-GO-ROUND 

The world is a merry-go-round, 

And gaily and fast we ride. 
With the double motion of days and years, 

We swing out far and wide. 

"But 'around' is a road that leads nowhere," 

The bored ones cry, 
"The lost go around in a circle." 

Youth laughs its reply. 

O the world is a merry-go-round; 

No place 'tis to think or abide; 
So let '6 go dizzy with motion, 

I^et us be children and ride. 

LOST DAYS 

Not for the days I shall not live, 

*Tis not for them I grieve and pine, 
But for the days that I have lived, 

And, living, did not make them mine, — 
The days that once were mine to mold 

And fashion to the heart's desire, 
But spoilt and ruined with bungling hands 

And lost and trampled in the mire. 



MISCELLANEOUS •■ 

IN THE CITY 

They that live within the city, 
Days of noise and nights of glamour, 

They have to pay the price, you know; 
Some with soul of truth and honor, 
Some, alas ! with youth and beauty, 

But all with life that ends in woe. 

The houses look down on the people, 
Walking in their giant shadow — 

They seem to threaten and to stare; 
And the people shrink and shiver 
With a dread unspoken never 

At the marble menance there. 



THE DREAM 

My life draws inward to a dream. 

After the folly and the fret; 
The door is shut against the world, 

Against departure locked and set. 

Pale with defeat, and deathly pale, 

These limbs that no more burdens take- 

I will be silent and forget 

And dream of death and never wake. 



B3 MISCELLANEOUS 

VANITAS VANITATUM 

I walked and mused on many things, 
On warrior-heroes, saints, and kings, 

Evil and good — 
On life and death; and when I came 

To where they stood , 
Those vagabonds of time and aim, 

Unto my mood, 
They seemed to say, "There is no deed 

Under the sky 
Worthy to wreak our souls upon, 

And that is why 
That we stand idle in the sun. ' ' 

TO THE SEA 

I come to thee, 

salt, unresting sea, 
As a child to its parent, 
For I was born of thee; 
Thy salt is in my blood 

And thy unrest is in my soul — 
Ay, I am the soul of thee, 
The spirit of thy mood, 
And eagerly 

1 sniff the air and watch the billows roll 



MISCELLANEOUS t 83 



FROM A CAR-WINDOW 

With smile, and sigh, and wave of hand, 
They greet the traveler through the land 

To fairer lands beyond, 
From dreams behind to hopes before, 
From city unto city, o'er 

A lone and sterile ground. 

O'er-labored under leaden skies, 
They view with dimly yearning eyes 

The great, rich world go by. 
They hear it roaring through the night, 
And in their dreams for Heart's Delight 

They, too, take train and fly. 



NATURE 

The hill, and wood, and meadow 
Are nature, but not mine; 

They brood in peace and quiet, 
While, restless, I repine. 

Why do I feel so keenly 
What they so calmly take ? 

They're nature sleeping, dreaming, 
I'm nature wide awake. 



64 MISCELLANEOUS 

MY HEART AND I 

O Heart of me that fails and falters 
While youth and love are passing by, 

Longing to go, afraid to venture, 
Afraid to live, afraid to die ! 

O Heart, whence comes this coward shrinking 
From out the lists of high emprise, 

Fearing alike men'B praise and censure 
And what we love and what despise ? 

Methinks we 've lived through cataclysms, 
The only things that did not die, 

Or crouched in dread 'mid succulent grasses 
While monstrous mastodons went by, 

Or in some ancient, hideous battle 
I think we must have died of fright — 

A fleeing shape of nameless terror 
Pursued through vast primeval night. 

SUNDAY EVENING 

Cold suppers and deserted streets — 

I walk alone; 
The evening chill and unknown dread 

Cut to the bone. 



MISCEU,ANBOUS 65 



WANDER SONG 

I pass with time from place to place, 
Like time, return no more; 

Always a new, immortal face 
To greet me at the door. 

Friends alter not nor love grows cold, 

No change in life is rung; 
For me the old were always old, 

The young are always young. 

I pass with time from place to place, 
Like time, return no more; 

Always a new, immortal face 
To greet me at the door. 



HYPERSENSITIVE 

I have no joy in Nature's drama, 
Trembling, thinking of my part. 

I cannot hear the sweet bird music 
For the beating of my heart. 

I cannot see the splendid sunrise 
For the shadow on my brain. 

I cannot feel life's joy and rapture 
For its bitterness and pain. 



«5 



MISCELLANEOUS 



THE UNATTAINABLE 

WE feel in distance and in sound 

Vague yearnings never put in speech; 

And, seeking, we have never found, 
And heaven's just beyond our reach. 

We fail and faint in alien lands 
And all seems lost, yet all is well, 

For pleasures grasped melt in the hands 
And heaven gained would turn to hell. 

ALONE 

I walk the streets, restless, unknown, 
Then back to this one room, alone. 
I turn and fret in aimless quest 
And fruitless yearnings unexpressed. 
I chafe the silence of the years, 
And life-long worries grow to fears 
And fierce regrets none understands — 
Feeling my life slip through my hands. 



TO A BABY 

So small and frail thou art, baby, 

In paths untrod, 
That I, who never cried to God, 

Cry out, O God ! 



MISCELLANEOUS 87 



IN THE SLUMS 

"Why are the people poor ? " I asked, 
Replied one the motley throng: 

"Ourlabor'e cheap, the food is dear, 
And everything is wrong." 

"Why are the poor so dirty here ?" 
Again I would informed be. 

"Is it because the water's dear ?" 
But no one answered me. 



TOBACCO SMOKE 

The conflagration of great cities, 

Of Moscow, Rome, 

Lit up the nights of weeks, but this, 

The conflagration of man, 

Glows in the coals of time 

And smoulders through eternity. 



IN EXTREMIS 

Dying, we find no rest, 
Tired out beyond all sleep, 

Lashed on by pain to death 
Beyond all tears to weep. 



8d MISCEIXANEOUS 



BKTWHEN THE BAYS 

O dark, and damp, and drizzly daya, 
Among the creeks, between the bays ! 
Black swamps and ponds covered with fogs 
And mossy stumps and rotting logs 
Alive with terrapins and frogs. 
A drowned land 'neath murky skies, 
Where humid vegetation thrives, 
Of rapid growth and quick decay; 
And if the clouds uplift a day, 
Again they sink and settle down 
O'er quaggy marsh and gloomy town. 
O dark, and damp, and drizzy days, 
Among the creeks, between the bays ! 



A TOILER'S CONSCIENCE 

I cannot read, or write, or idle 

In clear, fair weather, but must moil 

la the plowed fields, urged on by conscience 
Born of an ancestry of toil. 

But when the day is wet and stormy, 
Or Winter drives us from the field, 

It sets me free for reading, writing, 
A joy that labor ne'er can yield. 



MISCEIXANBOUS 9g 

THE AEROPLANE 

Like birds, men fly into the air, 
But do not leave the earth, 
Although the moon is seen afar 
And beacons many a star. 

O man who dreams and dares ! 
O fragile, winged car ! 
How distant is the goal ! 
How far the nearest star ! 

BLOOD 

O thou red fluid of being, Life, 
In what alembic brewed, under what spell ? 
A distillation of the dawn or liquid flame ? 
O who shall say what thing thou art, 
Thou flux of life red from the heart ? 

THE BEGGAR 

With mute appeal and white head bowed, 
The beggar stands amid the crowd. 
Amid the moving stream of life — 
A spectre in the streets of strife. 



<*> MISCELLANEOUS 

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF 

Ws fight iu civil warfare, 

Where victory means defeat, 
And Poverty, a jackal, 
\.« Hangs on the day's retreat. 

We straggle in confusion, 

Divide our strength and fall, 
A strength that held together 

Would make us lords of all. 

How long this insurrection, 

How long before we know 
We have one life and welfare 

Against a common foe ! 



WHIP-POOR-WILL 

A voick is heard, but no one is seen, 
A cry in the night, O what can it mean ? 

It sounds like our own, but is not ours — 
A mimic voice of the twilight hours. 

Is it the Night's mock at the Day's vain strife? 
Or the Voice of Spring in the the dusk of life ? 



MISCELLANEOUS g« 

WATER ON THE DESERT 

Water flowing on the desert, 

Flowing from the mountains down, 

Flux of life in motion, mingling 

With the dry earth, bare and brown; 

TiJl the slumbering sands awaken 

At the liquid touch anew, 
Waken into grass and flowers, 

And the dream of life comes true. 

Water flowing on the desert, 

Cooling to the parched breath, 
Flux of life forever flowing 

From the rigid jaws of death. 

TO A PINE TREE 

What vague desire was the germ of thee 
That stirred into life and grew to a tree, 
And blossomed in sex and fruited in seed. 
What yearning, what groping, felt lack or need t 

O life in the sap ! O soul in the pine ! 
How strange is thy life compared unto mine I 
Yet the same world-yearning, the same earth-plaa. 
That made thee a tree made me a man. 



9* MISCEIXANBOUS 



WHEN THOU ART OLD 

Whkn thoa art old 

Thou shalt go on a crutch, leaning heavily , 
Or, sit stagnant, propped with pillows, 
Feeble, febrile, apathetic, pathetic. 

Thy days shall be days of utter weariness, 
Of insipidity and imbecility, 
And the night shall bring no respite; 
Thy sleep shall come by starts and fits 
And leave a bad taste in the mouth. 

No recognizing intelligence shall flash a greeting 
From the eyes, but thou shalt meet thy old cronie* 
With clash and jar of wood and stone, 
Dull and heavy. 

And so thou shalt die for years, 

And when thou art utterly dead 

Thy heirs shall share thy goods among them 

And bury thee with a secret feeKng of relief. 

OLD AGK 

To be young and then to be old — 
There is nothing sadder in life than tbia. 
Old age with its white hair, 
A signal of distress, white flag of surrender. 



MISCELLANEOUS 9$ 

SPECTRES 

That old man creeping down the fttreet 

Was once the baby of a rosy-cheeked girl. 

O boy-father and girl-mother, 

If you could have seen your baby then 

As he is now, the spectre of love and youth, 

How it would have frightened you ! 

Alas ! we all turn to spectres in old age 
And haunt the scenes of our youth. 

EMPTY BOTTLES 

A child is playing with empty bottles 
The drunken father's thrown away. 

There's nothing left but empty bottles 
And the play — 

Tragedy. 

GOD SAID 

God said: "The hero's part, to play it, 
The flowers of life, the good of ill, 
Are yours if you but say, I wiW — 

And do you know ? I could cot say it. 



^ 94 MISCELLANEOUS 

ROCKABY BABY 

Infant, asleep in the cradle, 

I sit and wonder to what tbou art sleeping, 

Plain man or god, leader or led, 

One in a million or the million, 

Whether to a self-important man-of -affairs, 

Or to a shrinking, cringing vagabond, 

Who shall through dreary years hang limp 

Along the crowded ways of life. 

Perhaps thou'lt live a dope-slave or a drunkard, 
Fast bound by the chains of habit 
In a burning hell of remorse. 

where and what is thy fatal defect. 
Thy ' tcndo Achillis ? 

Is it a hereditary taint in the blood 

To break forth into virulent corruption 

And make life loathsome ? 

Or some insignificant blotch upon the brain 

To slowly spread, grow with the growing man, 

Till the whole mind if blurred, and dulled, and dead ? 

Whether thou art born to this or that, 

1 know not, but one thing I know: 

That as thou wast born of thy parents' yearning, 
Yea, of the yearning of ten thousand thousand parents, 
Yea, of ten thousand thousand centuries, 



MISCELLANEOUS ff 



Yea, of eternity, so thou shalt live and die 

Still yearning, vainly struggling, 

Grasping the impalpable air in thy empty palms. 



MICROBES 

The world is bitter with its strife 
And all its ways are choked with life. 

There is blight in the orchard, anthrax in the stable. 

And fever in the house. 

O life is a battle with life ! I am weary of life — 

Life that preys upon life, bacterial life, 

Infintesimal, multitudious, parasitic, pestiverous < 

Where, O where shall I find death ? 

'Tis not in the wormy grave, not there, not here. 

The world is a-squirming and crawling with life; 

Great God ! the very rocks are alive ! 

From life, from a thousand lives, I cry 

For the peace and stillness of death ! 



AS A FLOWER 

My life is furled and droopeth as a flower 

In desolate days of rain, 
And it shall not outlast the pelting hour, 

Ne'er lift its head again. 



96 MISCELLANEOUS 



AN INVOCATION TO PATERNITY 

O Father ! Mother ! 
Ye are as gods to kill or make alive; 
Within your hands the helpless future lies — 
O guide and save ! 

O Father ! Mother ! is it well, the life ye gave, 
Maimed and wronged, a shame and a reproach ? 
Have the unborn no rights ? 

Shall mind ne'er enter in the making of the mind, 
But only blind and senseless lust ? 

O Father ! Mother ! 

Ye are as gods to kill or make alive; 

Within your hands the helpless future lies — 

O guide and save ! 

THE BLACK SIDE 

In the race struggle, we have learnt 
White man and white man's cruelty, 

For we have been tortured and burnt 
In the red flames of jealousy. 

Yet not in kind, but kindness, we repay 
The hatred that no kindness can remove. 

Though we may have the child's mind, as they say, 
We have the child's heart, too, and that is love. 



MISCELLANEOUS 97 



REVENGE 

"I slew bim for my enemy, 
Wronged and enraged thereat." 

"O fool, to kill your enemy; 
Disease would tend to that." 

"'Twas right that he should suffer for 

The evil he did plan. " 
"Why, then, you should have let him live 

And suffer being man." 



JOHN DOE AND RICHARD ROE 

John Doe and Richard Roe, 
Names of men that no men know. 
What if it should prove to be 
You and I the mystery, 
You and I that no men know — 
John Doe and Richard Roe ? 



KNIGHTS- ERRANT 

As knights of the eternal quest, 
We've no abiding, know no rest, 
And start and stop not with the breath- 
The feet of life, the winds of death. 






98 MISCELLANEOUS 

THE VAGABOND 

You ask me of my vagabondage, 
And this is all I have to say: 

Who travels without purse must travel 
A weary way, aweary way. 

I came through valleys, over mountains, 
Beautiful, I have been told — 

I only know the days were lonely, 
I only know the nights were cold. 

A land of homes, and friends, and lovers, 
But no welcome waited me; 

Every dog was fierce against me, 
Every man my enemy. 

FROM THE OUTSIDE 

Ye who live safe in houses 
And look out from the windows, 
What know ye of the outside, 
Of wet, or cold, or cloudy ? 
That's left for ue, the homeless, 
Who watch the days and shudder, 
Who know the cold of winter, 
The night of sleet and snow, 
When homes, like stars, are lighted 
And we've no where to go. 



MISCELLANEOUS 99 



STREETS 

These streets are paths of duty 

To the toiling crowds and show 
All drab and grey in the morning, 

But at night they glimmer and glow 
With tbe tired content of the evening 

To the thousands that homeward wend, 
Yet to me who walk uncertain 

They have no meaning or end. 

Barred out from the world and its pleasure, 

I nightly turn from my hut 
To walk the deserted pavements, 

And when doors are opened and shut, 
I hear glad voices and laughter 

And see from the cheerless street 
On the blinded windows the shadows 

Of wife and children, sweet. 



BEAUTY 

Beauty is not the hue and glow of right 
Nor for man's pleasure given; 

E'en Hell itself is beautiful at night 
From the far windows of Heaven. 



loo MISCELLANEOUS 



WEALTH AND POVERTY 

Wealth means leisure, freedom; 

Poverty is care. 
Wealth owns the pearls of morning 

And sunset gold. I swear 

Who owns the earth owns heaven; 

For him the clouds are rolled; 
Even poppies by the wayside 

Are bought with yellow gold. 



THE HARDEST THING IN THE 
WORLD TO DO 

The hardest thing in the world to do 
Is the thing you put off doing, 
The thing you did not do yesterday, 
The thing you did not do last month; 
The hardest thing in the world to do 
Is the thing you put off doing. 



A FRIEND 

Gold is the Friend Munificent, 
A necessary friend that makes 
All other friends unnecessary. 



MISCELLANEOUS IOt 



THE LABORER 

For his work his work has given him 
Hard thews and a big coarse hand, 

And his eyes are snnk, half-seeing, 
In a face all bearded and tanned. 

How long since a milk-white baby 
He clung to his mother's breast, 

While the girls all ran to kiss him 
With laughter, cooing, and jest ! 

And what is the fruit of his labor, 
Long days in the wind and the sun ? 

Stone streets and heavy steel railroads, 
Canals, vast levees upthrown. 

He has lain down his life for others, 

Bleeding at every pore, 
And the world of wealth and leisure 

Goes carelessly riding o'er. 



MASTER AND SERVANT 

The mind that scorns to be a servant 
The role of master, too, will swerve; 

What makes the servant makes the master; 
It is as base to rule as serve. 



102 MISCELLANEOUS 

WANDERLUST 

With vague unrest about the heart, 

I wander far and near, 
Drawn by a Want that has no part 

In all I see or hear. 

A Want each day made manifest 
In every thought and act, 

North and south and east and west, 
In this and that. 



LONELINESS 

I walk the streets alone, yet not alone, 
For though they do not note or heed, 
I have the company of thousands; 
Yet if one should speak to me 
I should be lonely indeed. 



IMPASSE 

Driven in on myself from every side — 
No outward world for me. 
Turn inward, O soul, turn inward and glow, 
A red coal of thought hidden 
In the white ashes of silence. 



MISCELLANEOUS 103 

THE RETURN 

I'll go back at lilac -time 

From my wandering around the world, 

I'll go home in the spring. 

Nay, but I am grown old with wandering — 

I'll go back at autumn 

With the frost and falling leaf, 

I'll go home in the fall. 

Nay, the folks are dead and gone, 
And I'll go home no more at all. 

DESIRE 

My life is all a long desire 

That years have brought no nigher, 

Left unfulfilled. 

Love at the heart of yearning, cry — 
Cry out before we die, 
By loneliness killed. 

THE MASQUERADE 

Lifk is a masquerade. The fool is king, 
The nobleman, a rogue — life is a masquerade. 



164 MISCELLANEOUS 

AT THE ROAD'S END 

I was Youth and Romance 

Fresh from sleep and dream; 

I was Youth and up before the sun; 

My heart went forth to meet the dawn. 

Now I have been and I have seen, 
And I have not a word to say. 
I have been and I have seen, 
And I am weary of the day 
And turn again to sleep and dream, 
Turn again into the night. 



FLOWERS 

As flowers that men pluck wantonly, 
Clutch at their beauty and sweet, 

In a moment are faded, discarded, 
So ye girl-flowers of the street. 

As the flowers of the field and the forest 
Bloom not for beauty, but life, 

So the flower of man in woman — 
Daughter, mother, and wife. 



MISCELLANEOUS 105 

MY LOST IDEAL, 

Unto my youth's Ideal, 

"Adieu," I said, "but stay; 
I serve the world and for 

Tomorrow give today. ' ' 

Now after many years 

I am returned again 
To seek my youth's Ideal, 

And seek and seek in vain. 

'Tis lost and gone for ay; 

I ne'er shall find it more, 
Though I should seek fore'er 

The wide world o'er. 

Whate'er our lot or fate, 

We can't evade or shirk. 
The man is what he does; 

His life is in his work. 

THROUGH LIFE BY TRAIN 

Wk hurry through life by train, 

And fast and faster it goes ; 
But we will pause at the journey's end 

And rest in deep repose. 



106 MISCELLANEOUS 

THE DESERTED HOUSE 

Back from the road it stands, 

House of another day; 
No more at life's commands 

It keeps its ancient way. 

No waking at the morn, 

No neighing in the stalls; 
Day lies, like night, forlorn; 

No footstep in the halls. 

A brooding memory 

The olden time endears, 
In ruin and left to the 

Obliterating years. 

A BIRTH 

A sinful secret babbled to the world 
In baby words, in infant clouts unfurled. 
A moment's joy turned to a life of pain, 
To die a thousand thousand times in vain. 

DEATH, THE INQUISITOR 

Death tortures before he kills 
On the rack of disease, 
Death, the Inquisitor of life. 






MISCELLANEOUS 107 



VAIN ADVICE 

My heart, no more, with vain repining, 
Profane the sacredness of grief, 

When the whole world is filled with sorrow, 
And seeks, but cannot find, relief. 

But there is no degree in sorrow, 
My heart made answer, and of all 

The many millions that have suffered 
None ever thought his sorrow small. 

And 'twere inhuman to find comfort 

In others' agony and moan; 
The suffering of my fellow mortals 

Can only add unto my own. 

IMAGINATION 

Imagined work is play, 

Imagined life is art. 
The child and artist, they 

Have chosen the better part. 

SCIENCE 

Science, the lamp of knowledge 

In the night of the world, 

Lighting the steps of Man, the Explorer. 



IOS MISCELLANEOUS 

A CAMP-MEETING PROMENADE 

A ring of life and light 
In the black night 
And spectral wood. 

Life goes in couples, arm and arm; 
Flesh thrills to flesh,; the night feels warm 
With lust and glare. 

And round and round they go, 
Sweetheart and beau, 
Expectant, eager, smiles and sighs, 
And hot -flushed cheeks and love-lit eyes, 
Maiden and boy. 

An altar there, the Christian's goal, 
Erected to life's sin and dole, 
Dark, silent, now, the mourners gone; 
Youth circles round, a merry throng, 
With beating hearts and faces bright, 
For Youth's in love with life tonight — 
The altar and the coffin wait. 

LIMITATIONS 

We look through telescopes to see — 

Infinity; 
And with the blocks of time build for — 

Eternity. 



MISCELLANEOUS IO9 



ALFALFA 



The flower of the pasture, 
Blossoming protein. 



Grazed by the lowing cattle, 
Cut by the mowing blades, 

I grow again and blossom 
After the ruthless raids. 

The grazing and the mowing 
But bring me on my way; 

I sprout and spring perennial 
After a crop of hay. 

The bee, too, is my partner, 
Looks after all my flowers, 

The tireless wing and pander 
Of my numb sexual powers. 

Mowed by the frost of winter, 
I start again to birth, 

Tenacious, firmly rooted 
In the deep soiled earth. 



HO MISCELLANEOUS 

THOUGHTS 

Each soul is a separate thought, 
A separate thought of God, 
And thought and thought ignite 
From friction of contact 
And give light to the world. 

My soul is a thought of God 

In a wayward mood expressed, 

A feeling of forlornness and failure. 

BEAUTY AND DISTANCE 

The glad, the beautiful, the fair, 
Are found in yesterday's despair, 
Old griefs made beautiful by time 
And set to music and to rhyme. 

TENANTS 

When that white domed Palace of the Mind, 

The Mind vacates, vile worms the tenants are; 

And through the windows there, where once the Soul 

Looked forth in speculation on the world, 

The worms crawl in and out. 



MISCELLANEOUS III 



THE SISTERS OF MERCY 



They come from the last sickness, 
A white corpse void of breath — 

Clad in the garb of mourning, 
They bring U6 news of death. 

When through the merry-making 
They, silent, take their way, 

The mirth dies from the music, 
Men cross themselves and pray. 

They come like pale-faced spirits 
Breathing awhile our breath; 

Clad in the garb of mourning, 
They bring us news of death. 



THE CHILD-KING 

"Woe to thea, O land, when thy king is a child !" 

A child upon the throne of Life — 

Life trembles at its fate. 
But Time will make and crown him Man- 

The centuries on him wait. 



112 MISCELLANEOUS 

"THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES" 

Yes, "the female of the species is more deadly than 

the male" 

To the foe that tracks her offspring ' 'and her instincts 

never fail." 

In the hour of danger often the male turns coward, 

slinks away; 

Leaves the female to defend them from the animals 

that prey. 

Often, too, she must defend them e'en from him from 

whom they sprung, 

For the male is blind and vicious and will sometimes 

eat his young. 

Therefore, hers the place of honor, hers the forefront 

in the strife, 

She, the mother of the species and defender of their 

life. 



THE ANSWER 

"What is this life-force ? What ami?" 

To which my soul did make reply: 

4 'The restless spirit of the earth 

That groans and travails unto birth, 

Deep down in elemental night 

A blind god yearning toward the light." 



MISCELLANEOUS 1 1 3 



BROTHERS 

Brothers we were born 

Into the centuries, 
And brothers we in prejudice 

That makes us enemies. 



LIBERTY 

A thousand years ago begun 

The fight for liberty; 
A thousand battles have been won — 

And still we are not free. 



TO KNOW AND NOT TO KNOW 

Not to know is Hate 

That in cruelty wreaks its fears. 
To know is Love, 

And pity is Love in tears. 



THE UNPARDONABLE SIN 

Sexual levity is the sin unpardonable, 
Man false to himself and the purpose o'er him. 

Who laughs and jeers at woman as woman 
Laughs and jeers at the mother that bore him , 



IT4 MISCELLANEOUS 

FORSYTHIA AND DAFFODILS 

When blooms the rich forsythia 
We know that Spring is here — 

All flower and all yellow 
Before the leaves appear. 

She, while as yet retreating snow 

Makes white the distant hills, 
In the brown earth, 'neath the bare boughs, 

Blooms with the daffodils. 

Her flowers are golden bells 

Hung in March winds and ring 

The bridal march of Spring, 
While faery daffodils, 

In garden plot and row, 

Their golden trumpets blow. 

And the dreaming folk below 

The airy dales and dells 
Can hear them blow 

And ring, 
The trumpets and the bells 
Of Spring. 



MISCELLANEOUS U5 

THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 

See the snow-peaks in the distance ! 
Here begins the quest and venture — 

Leave behind the hearts that quail. 
Here's the end of road and wagon; 
Saddle ponies, pack the burros, 

Ride upon the mountain trail ! 

Where the trail goes winding upward 
Over broken, rugged country, 

Over porphyry and shale, 
There are hints of fortunes waiting 
In the float from hidden ledges, 

Fortunes on the mountain trail. 

We shall seek for hidden treasure 
Through the day, and in the evening 

Hear the old prospector's tale, 
Stories told around the campfire — 
Sleeping out beneath the pine trees, 

Dreaming on the mountain trail. 

In the dawn, auspicious, golden, 
Saddle ponies, pack the burros, 

For the quest o'er hill and vale, 
Fording streams and climbing ranges — 
Forward, Youth, upon adventure, 

Ride upon the. mountain trail ! 



Il6 MISCELLANEOUS 

THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN COLUMBINE 

She lives in the lonely, high mountain glen, 
Aerial, lucid, unpampered by men, 

Queen flower of the mountains, the columbine, 
And breathes the delicate air of summer, 

Cooled by the snow-caps, fragrant with pine. 

She has stood on the bank and heard in a dream, 
Through countless summers, the rush of the stream 

O'er rocks that impede and confine, 
Till the soul of the rock and the river 

Blooms in the columbine. 



TO THE CALIFORNIA POPPY 

O poppy, thou hast conquered with thy beauty 
The valley meadows and the uplands warm, 

Until thy flaming banners are advanced 

Up mountain walls and take the world by storm. 



COYOTE 

A howling coyote, 

The plain and dreariness- 
The spirit of the desert 

Crying its loneliness. 



MISC EIX ANEOUS 117 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 

In Tennyson, life full and free 
Outpoured in songs of ecstasy. 

A misborn Pope, writhen in pain — 
Song turned to satire on his lips. 

THE WANDERER 

I fbei, shut up in place, and go; 

There is a longing in the mind; 
O do I travel to escape, 

Or is it something I would find ? 

ELIZABETH 

She was the maiden hope of life, 

Our dear Elizabeth, 
A hope forever lost to life 

And was not gained by death. 

NOCTURNE 

Each sailing world hangs out a light, 

In depths of space their distant vigils keep. 

Silence, an ocean dim with night, 

Breaks in dream around the couch of sleep. 



Il8 MISCELLANEOUS 

W. C. T. U. 

For sons, and brothers, and husbands, 
As mothers, and sisters, and wives — 

By love, and the lives we gave them, 
We plead with men for their lives. 

Each year we bear and breed them, 
Ten thousand men, and strong, 

To be drugged and killed with poison, 
A sacrifice to Wrong. 

For sons, and brothers, and husbands, 
As mothers, and sisters, and wives — 

By love and the lives we gave them, 
We plead with men for their lives. 



AN EPITAPH 

My words — they wronged me, 

And my work — it cheated me; 

But I am done with words and work 

And words and work are done with me. 



MISCELLANEOUS 119 



THE DRUNKARD'S TOAST 

Fill up the glass ! We drink to death, 
The death this drink shall bring to pass ! 
To death-in-life, the drunkard's death ! 
Fill up the glass ! We drink to death ! 

We drink confusion unto life, 

To prudence and the work of years; 

We drink to failure and neglect, 

To child-wrong and to woman's tears, 

Ay, drink to crime and to distress 

And then drink to forgetfulness. 

Fill up the glass ! W r e drink to death ! 



THE COURSE OF EMPIRE 

"Westward the course of empire takes its way"- 
Westward to the East, to be supreme. 

Japan becomes an empire of today 

And China wakens from her opium-dream. 



PERSONAL 



TO SWINBURNE 

Thou hast thrilled us into rapture 
As a woman thrills her lover, 
And we praise thee with the passion 
Thou hast stirred to life and being, 
And its scorn, its wrath and hatred, 
Keep for the. unfeeling critic 
Of thy poetry. 



TO GEORGE STERLING 

Since thou hast lived, O true-born poet, 
Earth's more beautiful than before; 

Thou hast added a new splendor 
To the wave and to the shore. 



PERSONA!, 12 I 

TO RUDYARD KIPLING 

You love the rage of relentless battle, 

For it was there that your soul was born, 

Love life to risk it and fight for the fight's sake, 
And have for everything else but scorn. 

We have met before; we need no introduction; 

We fought and tore in the primeval mud. 
You were the victor and I was the vanquished, 

And you quenched your thirst with my warm red 

blood. 

Now we meet again; the old hurt rankles; 

I hate with the hate of the weak for the strong 
And you with the hate of insolent swagger 

And sheer brute strength that can do no wrong. 

You conquer once more, but perhaps tomorrow 
When we shall arise from the dust again, 

You shall have outslept the brute and the warrior 
And grant the peace I now crave in vain. 

TO DANTE 

O Spirit of Vengeance and of Flame, 
Who took the name of Love in vain, 
Tbank Heaven, by thee no life is crossed, 
For wert thou God then man were lost. 



122 PERSONAL 

G. K. CHESTERTON 

He who should have been the leader 

Of bis age until the last, 
Like Memory, turns backward 

To the graveyard of the pa6t, 

Foregoes the Great Adventure, 
The dream of a better way — 

What part is his in the future 
Who has none in today ? 

But the fear of unknown tomorrow 
Shall stay not the feet that climb, 

And the banners of Life are advanced 
On the parapets of Time. 



TO F. W. H. MYERS 

Doubt-driven from Christianity 

And sorrowing after immortality, 

And groping for it in the dark unknown, — 

What blind thing hast thou stumbled on 

In that dark, desperate night ? 

What hidden truth hast brought to light ? 

But if it be not immortality 

What matters it to thee ? 



PERSONAL I£3 

SHAKESPEARE AND THE BACONIANS 

"But he that filches from me my good name, 
Kobs me of that which not enriches him, 
And makes me poor indeed." — Shakespeare. 

The laureate of the poets — lo, his fame 
Has reached at last the dull ears of the mob, 
Who have, roused from indifference to hate, 
Profaned with vulgar hands the poet's grave 
And stolen the laurels from the poet's brow 
To crown a hero of their own, the lord. 
O greatest theft of time, beggaring the world ! 
What fame is sure since Shakespeare's is not sure? 

ANNIE BESANT 

She, the gentlest of the sage, 

Rose above her sex and age, 
But unequal to the strain, 

Sighed, became woman again. 



JOHN BROWN 

John Brown, the indiscreet, 

Imprudent for the truth, fanatic for the right, 

Yet grander in defeat 

Than they who temporized, the men that won the fight. 



124 PERSONAL 



KEATS 

The Greek religion (piety) 

Is now a theme for poetry. 

In broken fane and painted urn, 

Its foolish creeds 

And cruel deeds 

Are overgrown 

With moss and beauty not their own. 

When we are one with Greece and Rome, 

And our religion, in its turn, 

Its turn completes, 

Becomes mythology, 

Then Christianity 

Shall have its Keats. 

IZAAK WALTON 

He felt the beauty that he sought, 

But not the havoc that he wrought, 

While angling, listening to the flow 

Of silver streams through tangled green, 

Himself the discord in the scene. 

But life is sleep — how should he know ? 

And death brought on a deeper sleep; 

And o'er him sleeping let us weep, 

But not too loud lest he awake 

And seeing all his gentle heart should break. 



PERSONAL 125 

TO JOYCE KILMER 

After reading his poem, "To a Young Poet Who 
Killed Himself " in which he calls the dead poet "a 
coward and ait ass." 

Do only cowards kill themselves 
That "coward" you must cry ? 

Is it not cowardice to live 
For him who fears to die ? 

Not cowardice excites your spleeen, 
Though "coward" you must cry; 

It is because his bitter death 
Gives your smug creed the lie. 

TO FATHER TABB 

Thy right to be a father 
The Church took without shame, 

And then as if in irony 
Gave to thee the name. 

Renouncing earth for Heaven, 

Thou lost the life divine — 
The laugh of little children, 

A woman's hand in thine. 



126 PERSONAL 

THOREAU AT WARDEN 

I wonder if, soul-satisfied, 
He felt at home with birds and trees, 
And never tossed from side to side 
At night, restless and ill at ease, 
And if he did not, missing, grieve 
And yearn, like Adam before Eve, 
The rustle of a dainty dress, 
A voice, a touch, a soft caress. 



TO EUGENE V. DEBS 

Socialist ca n dida te for pre si den t. 

Hail champion of the losing fight 
For Brotherhood and Love and Right 
'Gainst Hate and Greed, ne'er counting cost, 
A losing fight that's never lost ! 



PERSONAL 127 

AVE ET VALE 

Homer Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, 

Like dead volcanoes stand, 
Vast vents of ancient, burnt-out passion 

In a forgotten land. 

O dramas made of crime and folly 

And epics of the sword, 
Ye please no more, your date is ended, 

Never to be restored. 

For time shall bring a greater Shakespeare, 

An Iliad different far — 
A tragedy without a murder, 

Brave men without a war. 

THE ILIAD 

They did not win and lose as men, 
But as the puppets of the gods, 
Who pulled the strings, deciding when 
And how the war and what the odds. 
No heroes they, not even men, 
But puppets of the dallying gods. 

And these half-men and meddling gods 
A poet has made immortal. 



128 PERSONA!, 

AT THE SIGN OF LYRE 
To My Favorite Poet 

At the Sign of the Lyre 

With many poets I have caroused, 

But thou alone didst never tire 

And life from dullness always roused. 

And my last journey there shall end 

At the Sign of the Lyre, 
For it is there that I would spend 

The last night before the fire. 

And I shall smile with thee at pain 
And shall in death, as life, rejoice, 

And I shall hear thee sing again 
And die with rapture on thy voice. 

OPEN HOUSE 

" 'With this same key 
Shakespeare unlocked his heart;' once more. 
Did Shakespeare ? If so, the less Shakespeare he." — Drowning. 

You, Browning, wrote your brains away, 
And did you nowhere show your heart ? 
Aha ! you thought to be o'er-smart, 
Conceal yourself behind your art — 
It palpitates — 'tis plain as day. 



PERSONAL 129 

THE DEAD BOSS 

Matthew S. Quay; odztt, 1904.. 

The boss is dead ! 
Office seekers, 
Henchmen and heelers, 
Bow the head 
And mourn your loss, 
For the boss is dead. 
The great, great boss ! 

He was a great man in a small way: 

He robbed the people and won their applause 

And ruled a whole state as his own. 

He was a great man in a small way: 

His heart ne'er thrilled to a noble cause, 

And he lived for power alone. 

Henchmen and heelers, pass on before 

The gilded casket where the dead boss lies. 

He worked for you, but his work is o'er; 

Then mourn and weep, — 

Weep, weep, weep, — 

And bury him deep, — 

Deep, deep, deep, — 

So deep that his spirit may never arise 

To trouble the world any more ! 



13O PERSONAL 

SOLD 

An Election Day i?i Delaware. 

Though its badge was an eagle, the party must own it 

Was the dollar that won, not the eagle upon it. 

Addicks bought it, you know very well; 

So who shall question his right to sell 

Or do as he please with the thing he bought ? 

The. sovereign people, the young and the gray, 

All marched to the poles on election day 

And voted their liberty clean away. 

For a rake-oft advanced, they sold him the right 

To stab in the back and plunder at night. 

They were bought and sold like hogs on the drive, 
A white man for ten and a nigger for five, 
Wheedled and driven and cheated and sold — 
He bought them with silver to sell them for gold ! 
In selling themselves they surely were soldi — 
Soldi sold! soldi 



PLACE 



SPRING IN DELAWARE 

Spring in Delaware — 
You can see it in the flowers, 
You can feel it in the air, 
You can hear it in the singing 
Of the birds a-building there. 

Spring in Delaware, 
In the heart and in the air; 
Once I felt it and I lived it, 
Spring and youth in Delaware. 



J 32 PLACE 

SAN FRANCISCO 

The earth it shook and opened, 

And the city fell, 
But men again have builded 

On the lid of Hell. 

And should again it crash down, 
Again they'd build their will; 
Earth-thunder cannot daunt them 
And only death can kill. 

CALIFORNIA 

Emigrants — 
Westward to California, 
Sunset and dreams — 

But the sun still sets in the west 

And the ocean rolls between us and our dreams. 

DAYS ON PUGET SOUND 

Days of grey on Puget Sound, 

Sunless days that dripped with rain, 

Lost in fog and mist profound, 
Never to be found again. 



PLACE 133 

MOJAVE HILLS 



The herds find here no grazing, 
The birds no welcome trees; 

The life that passes by us 
Is the only life one sees. 

Our loneliness, men feel it; 

They look and go away. 
We are weary of being silent 

And tired of the night and day. 

The road upon the hillside, 
It leads where, do you know ? 

What lies beyond the horizon ? 
We brood and long to go. 



CHICAGO 

'Tis the city of the West, of democracy and toil, 
Of the great, broad prairie and its deep, rich soil. 

O the labor that builds and the wealth that employs ! 
O city of action and stunned by its noise ! 

'Tis the West of London, Vienna, Berlin — 
As young as youth and as old as sin. 



134 PLACE 

THE DESERT: NEVADA 

Stricken by the hand of Fate, 

All things, motionless, await 

The rain that never comes; no hope 

In cloudless skies. Far westward slope 

Low bastioned hills without a tree, 

Dead-guarding some dread mystery. 

The land lies far in weary miles, 
Under the sun, across the sands. 
An aromatic scent beguiles, 
Of sage, sole plant in arid lands. 
From desert floors, wind-swept, arise 
Dust-clouds, like smoke, unto the skies. 

CASA GRANDE 

Arizona 

Wind across the ancient ruin, 
Blown from the forgotten past, 

With what memories it is laden, 
Dreams and loves that could not last ? 

Blown from out the brooding silence, 
Blown across the desert sand, 

Cries of battle, lamentations 
Of a race that lost the land ! 



p lace y£ 

THE SEVEN CITIES OF CIBOLA 
Arizona 

From my labor in the valley 

I often turn and northward gaze 
At the far mountains, faint in distance, 

Dim with atmospheric haze. 

Those are no mountains of trap or granite; 

They are touched by no earthly beams; 
Those shapes are air castles, romantic, 

And in the shadowy land of dreams. 

It was here came Coronado 

And it was yonder that he sought 

The seven cities of Cibola, 

Resplendent, like a golden thought. 

I, too, some day shall go to seek them, 

Perchance ne'er to return again, 
The seven cities of Cibola 

That Coronado sought in vain. 

SUNSET IN ARIZONA 

The day's heat settles along the horizon, 
Behind the crater-shaped hills that glow, 
The furnaces of even. 



136 PLACE 

THE DESERT: ARIZONA 

The mountains rise abrupt and angular 

From the plain, dry and bare. 

Rock and sand heaped pell-mell on 

The desert floor, the fragments of a world, 

Cleft by an ancient water-course, 

The dried-up river of Time. 

A lizard, see, on some forgotten errand 

Has fallen asleep. A giant cactus stands, 

With headless trunk and blunt arms stretched, 

Imploring, to the sky. 



AN ARIZONA TOAST 

Draughts of heaven, distilled sunlight, 

Transparent, tonic, dry, 
Blown down mountain and o'er desert 

Out of the clear blue sky. 

Standing in the crystal ether, 

The desert floor upon, 
Fill, we drink to Arizona 

The goblets of the sun. 



PLACE 137 

ROMANCE IN CALIFORNIA 

Ay, there was romance once in California, 

A gleam upon the mountain and the plain, 

And then the booster came, 

And he would grasp it in his hand, 

Advertised it, offered it for sale, 

And it vanished from the land. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 



PROTOPLASM AND CONSCIOUSNESS 

Consciousness is a stage in the evolution of sensa- 
tion. Without the sensitive medium of living proto- 
plasm there could be no consciousness — no thought, 
mind, soul. What feels, thinks, and speaks in us is 
the universe, the universe become partially conscious. 
As electricity passing through a carbon filament is 
turned into light, so sensation in the brain of man is 
turned into consciousness; but, unlike electricity, it 
first reconstructs the medium through which it is turn- 
ed into consciousness. 



MORALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS 



'If I had one prayer to make it would be, God give me to understand." 

— Ferrand. 



Because so-called morality is often more or less im- 
moral, some people have decided that we would be bet- 
ter without it, while others have declared that there 
is no such thing as morality. But morality should 
not be taken at man's valuation any more than him- 
self. If you will analyze so-called morality, you will 
find at the bottom intention, intention to do what is 



142 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

right, but intention itself cannot distinguish right from 
wrong. We must know the right before we can put it 
into practice. In other words, the morality of the indi- 
vidual is dependent upon his consciousness. It is not 
morality that is at fault, but our idea of morality. All 
the religion, all the good intentions in the world, will 
profit a man nothing if he lack understanding. 



CREATION AND CONSCIOUSNESS 

"The intestine rules the world. Life is a void that only death can fill." 

—Fabre. 

I saw a black snake yesterday with a green frog in 
its mouth. I would engrave this on our walls and 
monuments as a symbol of organic life — a snake with 
a frog in its month. 

That one species of animals should prey upon an- 
other, and should be compelled thereunto by the ne- 
cessities of existence, is damnable, yet this principle 
lies at the root of all life. Life is the infinite conver- 
sion of one form of life into another. It is intensely 
cruel, but unconsciously so, for whenever life becomes 
conscious of its own acts, of the conditions of exist- 
ence, it is filled with nausea, horror, and dismay 
thereat. Therefore, life as it is, life that preys upon 
life, could not have been the result of conscious design 
and foresight iti nature. The idea of a conscious god 
is monstrous. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 43 



THE HUNTER-SPORTSMAN 



"Boys throw stones at frogs in sport, but the frogs do not die in sport, 
but in earnest." — Bion. 



The hunter-sportsman is an animal that finds his 
pleasure in the suffering and death of other animals. 
There is nothing more horrible in life than an animal 
stalking its prey, and the most horrible feature of it is 
the pleasurable excitement m suffering and death, 
and the hunter-sportsman lingers as a survival of this 
pleasure. But he is not the monster that he appears 
to be, for he is unconscious of the suffering and death 
and feels only the sense of conflict. The conflict, 
however, is not between the life of the hunter and the 
life of the animal, but between the animal's chance to 
escape and chance of being killed. It is an unfair ad- 
vantage taken by the stong over the weak. It is not 
even sport; it is unconscious bullyism. 

We live at the expense of other life and even our 
pleasures are sanguinary and fatal. 



LOVE AND HATE 

Love and hate are both partial. Love cannot be 
depended upon for justice any more than hate. 

"Love is a passion, not a virtue," declared Ninon 
de Lenclos, and when we see thwarted love end in 
cruelty and murder we feel inclined to agree with her; 



144 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

nor is our opinion altered when we turn to so-called 
spiritual love, the love of God that burnt heretics at 
the stake and the love of morality that ends in immo- 
rality. 

Hate is often an indirect result of love. The love 
of what we believe to be good is the hate of what we 
believe to be evil. It is because the patriot loves his 
own country that he hates his neighbor-country. Men 
hate because they "love, not wisely, but too well," 
and the remedy is to be found in the rationalization of 
love, consciousness. 

It is useless to preach love: if one lack understand- 
ing, it will only get him into trouble; if he have under- 
standing, love will take care of itself. The Christian 
religion is an example of the folly of attempting to 
drive out hate with love; instead of driviug it out, it 
only increased it. Christianity, the religion of love, 
surpasses all others in hate. 



MATTER 

When I ask my friends what they mean by spirit, 
ual they talk about the invisible, the unseen, and point 
to the ether of space. But I have already been there, 
although I have no memory of it, for there is no mem- 
ory in that place, nor knowledge, nor life. Out of 
the vapor and invisible gasses I have arrived and walk 
firmly on the solid earth. Visible and palpable matter 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 45 

is the last word in evolution, the highest stage, not 
the lowest. 

I do not scorn nor flout matter. I cling to the gran- 
ite of matter. I embrace the earth with affection. 
O matter ! matter ! how precious you are to us whose 
lives you condition, beautiful in the colors of the land- 
scape, sweet to kiss in the red lips of the maiden ! 

After all, the so-called spiritualist does not care for 
the spiritual, or non-matter, any more than the mate- 
rialist. When he attempts to picture a future life it 
is always in the terms of matter. His spirit is the 
ghost of matter. 



PATRIOTISM 

Patriotism is the instinct of self-preservation or 
self-assertion as a racial or national unit. In the 
average citizen it takes the form of racial jealousy or 
idealized prejudice — "my country, right or wrong." 

We cannot get rid of our instincts, nor is it desirable 
that we should, but we can rationalize them, and if 
patriotism were rationalized we would be able to treat 
our neighbor-nations fairly, and even to symyathize 
with their aspirations, without losing our racial integ- 
rity. The evil of patriotism is not in patriotism itself, 
but in the patriot, and the remedy is civilization or 
the coming of age of instinct, which is reason. 



I46 ESSAYS IN COKSCIOUSNESS 

TRUE GREATNESS 

It is not the scientist whom the people call great 
and delight to honor, not the men who have helped 
and benefited mankind through scientific discovery 
and invention, but the warriors and conquerors, the 
Alexanders and Napoleons. The only thing that the 
fool and the bully can understand is a licking. 

Napoleon could win victories, but he did not know 
what to do with them when he had won them. War 
followed war and one battle led to another and to 
nothing else. No man ever made a greater failure of 
his life than Napoleon, his victories being only prelude 
to defeat, his leadership ending not only in the ruin 
of himself, but in the ruin of his country also. He 
left death and destruction in his wake and cut down 
the stature of the French race nearly two inches. He 
was worse than the black plague that swept through 
Europe in the Middle Ages, depopulating towns and 
cities, for the plague took its toll of death from old 
and young, weak and strong, alike, but Napoleon 
would have only the pick of mankind, the young and 
the strong. His fame is not founded upon individual 
worth, but upon the folly of mankind that makes such 
a career possible. The glory of Napoleon is the dis- 
grace of mankind. 

Let us compare him with another Frenchman, Pas- 
teur, who, by fighting and conquering the real enemy 
of mankind, disease, has added to the life and endur- 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 47 

ance of the human race, and the effect of whose work 
is cumulative and will last as long as there is reason 
in the brain of man. 

The truly great man is the scientist who adds to 
the sum of human knowledge. "The rest is all but 
leather or prunella." 



DEMOCRACY AND AUTOCRACY 

Democracy, like autocracy, is a system or method 
of government and not the government itself, which 
may be anything from individualism to socialism, from 
competition to co-operation. A democracy is a state 
where questions of government are submitted to the 
tribunal of the mind of the people and the defeated 
party agrees to abide by the decisio?i, provided he have 
the liberty of free speech with which to defend his 
measure and appeal from the decision. Free speech 
is the weapon of democracy. The victories of de- 
mocracy are won in the brain, not on the battlefield; 
with ballots, not with bullets. 

Autocracy is founded on physical force, the only 
thing the ignorant can understand; democracy is a 
matter of intelligence. War is an institution of au- 
tocracy and has no place in a democracy except as a 
defense against autocracy. When the United States 
resorted to civil war to decide the 6lavery question it 
ceased, for the time being, to be a democracy. 



I48 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

NOTES ON NIETZSCHE 
Cruelty and Consciousness 

The outstanding feature in the philosophy of Nietz- 
sche is cruelty. He speaks of cruelty as "one of the 
festal joys of mankind" and mouths it over and over 
as though it were a sweet morsel. He is even more 
blindly cruel than the animal, for the animal does 
usually have some regard for its own species, or it 
would cease to exist, but the selfishness of Nietzsche 
is directed against the members of his own species. 
The lamb-killing eagle, his symbol of ruthlessne6s, is 
not such a fool as Nietzsche, for the eagle preys upon 
lambs, not upon other eagles. 

His tirade against sympathy and pity is the wolf in 
his nature howling at the dawn of consciousness. 
The first step in consciousness is the realization that 
there is something in the world besides yourself and 
which carries with it the recognition of the equal 
right of that something to life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness. A superman such as Nietzsche 
predicted, a man of superior intelligence and unscru- 
pulously cruel at the same time, is unnatural and im- 
possible. After all, nature does not make supermen; 
it makes one-sided men, and it is by fitting the sides, 
ends, and angles of men together that we get the su- 
perman or complete man. 

To the assertion that cruelty is a biological necessity 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 49 

our answer i6 that life is not a necessity and is not 
worth cruelty. 

Democracy and Aristocracy 

Democracy is the highest political expression of in- 
dividual liberty, and if his philosophy were merely 
the philosophy of egoism it would have been to his 
interest to support and uphold it. It is not so much 
the philosophy of egoism as it is of despotism. He 
could not think of individual expression except in the 
terms of domination. He had the temperament of a 
petty tyrant or bully who thinks the way to show his 
own importance is to domineer and tyrannize over 
other people. 

Democracy provides the struggle necessary for the 
development of individuality. It is aristocracy that 
stands for suppression and is the leveler. It sup- 
presses, confines, and levels men into castes and class- 
es, while in a democracy there are as many levels as 
there are individuals. The equality of democracy is 
merely the equality of opportunity. A pampered ar- 
istocracy on the one hand and an enslaved working 
class on the other means degeneration for both. 
Physical exercise and moral restraint are as necessary 
for the well-being of the aristocrat as they are for the 
proletariat. 

He describes his ruling aristocracy as an aristocracy 
of birth and then goes on to speak of it as an aristoc- 



I5Q ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

racy of philosophers, but it could not be both. What 
we demand in an executive is executive talent, and it 
is a well-known fact that the abstract thinking of the 
philosopher unfits him for practical affairs. This in- 
consistency is the result of combining in his superman 
what he himself was with what he wanted to be. He 
thought of himself as a philosopher, and his superman 
is, therefore, a philosopher. But Nietzsche was also 
a contemptible snob with a hankering after the title 
and the rank of the nobility, and his superman must, 
also, be an aristocrat. 

The trend of the world toward democracy and co- 
operation is the natural and inevitable result of intel- 
lectual growth and enlightenment, and Nietzsche re- 
acted against it. 

Master-morality and Stave-morality 

It was not from history that Nietzsche derived his 
idea that sympathy and pity are slave-morality, but 
from hie imagination. Whenever the slave has had 
an opportunity he has shown himself to be just as 
cruel and vindictive as his master. The slave is a 
slave because of his ignorance and ignorance is always 
cruel and must either dominate or serve. Slave- 
morality is not sympathy and pity, but worship and 
reverence, and reverence, next to cruelty, is exactly 
what Nietzsche most admires, not only in the slave, 
but in the master, which goes to show that master- 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 151 

morality and slave-morality are different phases of the 
same thing, the master standing in the same relation 
to his king and god that the slave does to his master. 
The master is the complement of the slave, and the 
result is not a master-morality and a slave-morality, 
but a master-and-slave-morality. 

It is not the sympathy and pity in Christianity that 
make it a slave-religion, but its worship and reverence. 
Christianity is no more slave than any other religion 
6ince worship and reverence are the ritual of all relig- 
ion. What little sympathy and pity there are in 
Christianity are owing to the growing consciousness 
of mankind. 

Reverence for one's self and one's equals and con- 
tempt for everybody else — one does not have to be an 
aristocrat to have that kind of feeling; all that is nec- 
essary is to be a prig. The difference between mas- 
ter-morality and slave-morality is the difference be- 
tween prig and snob and Nietzsche was both. What 
he describes as master-morality is the pride and arro- 
gance of a small mind in a high position. 

Slavery and barbarism go together, and Nietzsche 
is the belated philosopher of barbarism, the degen- 
erate philosopher of swell-heads, highwaymen, and 
cut-throats. His thesis, "Nothing is true; all things 
are permissible," was the creed of the sect of Assas- 
sins, who were the terror of Syria in the eleventh and 
twelfth centuries. It was the savage in his nature 
that craved the excitement of danger: the freedom of 



I5 2 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

the outlaw is danger; the freedom of civilization is 
safety. Tyranny and slavery, cruelty and rever- 
ence — this is his philosopy. It is what Tamerlane 
practiced and what Nero might have written. It is 
like echoes of demoniac laughter heard at night around 
the ruins of the. past. 

There are two ways in which a man can get a living: 
one way is to exploit nature or himself and the other 
way is to exploit the other fellow. And here we get 
the crux of the whole matter, the tragedy of trage- 
dies, the the human tragedy, the exploitation of man 
by man. 

His philosophy is limited to master and slave, but 
there is a teriium quid, a freeman who is neither mas- 
ter nor slave and despises both, the modern man, 
whom Nietzsche could only rail at because he could 
not understand. It is this man who will make the 
history of the future, in which there will be neither 
master nor slave. To get beyond the slave we must 
get beyond the master. 

Egotism a?id Ig?wrance 

Without sympathy there can be no understanding. 
Egotism limits a man to himself and makes knowledge 
impossible. 

Nietzsche was limited to his talent and taste. He 
had no talent or taste for science, but he could not 
wholly ignore it, so he made it his business to belittle 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 53 

it and heap contempt acid derision upon scientists. 
Even in philosophy his sympathy did not extend 
beyond his own kind of philosophy, the introspective 
and inspirational, and he refused to recognize any- 
thing else as philosophy. His pride was a mark of 
ignorance, for the wise man knows that he has noth- 
ing to be proud of. He shut himself up in his con- 
ceit and was poisoned and driven mad by the venom 
of his own hatred. 

Dionysian 

Nietzsche showed a sense for the eternal fitness of 
things in selecting the old mythological god of drunk- 
enness, Dionysos, and the orgies held in his celebra- 
tion, to symbolize his individual unrestraint and law- 
lessness. His philosophy is indeed Dionysian. 



"MAN, THE ERECT" 

It is written in the Hebrew religion that no man 
can look upon the face of God and live; and, in truth, 
all religion is a shrinking from fact, an evasion that 
does not evade. But now that our turn has arrived, 
let us not kneel and cower, but stand up and look 
God in the face. 



154 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

CARLYLE AND HERO-WORSHIP 

Hero-worshp is the religion of barbarians and sav- 
ages. In a state of barbarism there are no ideas, but 
only persons, and the person that can make the great- 
est impression upon the ignorance and credulity of the 
people, who is usually the least worthy, is the hero. 
But as the people become enlightened and civilized 
they begin to turn from men to ideas, begin to look 
within for light and guidance and not without. So 
hero-worship has been a dismal failure. 

Carlyle's defense of chattel slavery was not an inci- 
dent nor a vagary, but the complement of hero- 
worship. Worship implies tyranny on the one hand 
and servility on the other. No one worships but a 
slave and no one but a slave or a bully would want to 
be worshiped. 

Hero-worship and reverence — what an anachronism! 
The modern attitude toward the world is neither rev- 
erence nor irreverence, but curiosity, and the demo- 
cratic attitude toward man is respect, not reverence. 
We stand ready to shake hands with the world, with 
kings and gods, but nix on the reverence and worship 
business. 

Carlyle and Nietzsche, let us hope, are the last de- 
spairing cries of monarchy and feudalism in Europe. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 155 

THE GREAT MYSTERY 

The universe is the Great Mystery, and the better 
we understand it, the greater mystery it becomes. 
The unconscious know no more of mystery than of 
knowledge and are incapable of wonder. 

The Great Mystery cannot be apprehended by the 
mind that can be satisfied with such naive explanation 
as "God made." There may be mystery connected 
with the belief in a God-made universe, but the Great 
Mystery does not really begin until we get beyond 
the God-hypothesis. It is to science, therefore, and 
not to religion, that we must go for mystery as well 
as knowledge. 

That mystery itself is not an object of worship is 
proved by the fact that the men to whom the uni- 
verse appears as the greater mystery have no inclina- 
tion to worship. It is not mystery that men worship, 
but gods and kings^-^v-Mre>v . 



STUDIES IN IRRATIONALITY 

The tragedies of literature are largely the tragedies 
of mistake and misunderstanding and could with pro- 
priety be classed as Studies in Irrationality. In a ra- 
tional world the only tragedy would be life itself, which, 
however, would probably become, in consequence, so 
overwhelming that life would be unendurable. 



156 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

CAVEAT EMPTOR 

Salesmanship is the art persuasion, which means 
to take an unfair advantage of a mind that is incapable 
of defending itself. It offers the greatest opportunity 
in life for the qualities of shrewdness and cunning, 
and the salesman has not been slow to take advantage 
of it. But set aside the sharp dealing of salesmanship 
and trade still remains ignoble, and this condition is 
inevitable from its nature, the desire to buy cheap and 
sell dear. He who can stand at the point of contact 
between buyer and seller, where prices are actually 
made, and not despise himself and mankind is an in- 
sensible brute. Salesmanship is the only work that is 
ignoble, yet it is the work to which everyone aspires. 



BEAUTY AND PLEASURE 

Beauty and pleasure are merely the means to an 
end, which is neither pleasant nor beautiful. They 
are the lure of the gods, the bait in the trap of life. 
Look for the. flower tomorrow and you will find a seed; 
for youth in the arms of love and you will find a fam- 
ily of children. We are enamoured of beauty and 
pleasure and are, therefore, miserable. The ends of life 
are not ours. We want no end, or, rather, we want 
the means to be the end, sensation for its own sake. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 57 

LIFE 

Insect, reptile, man, are different phases of the 
Bame thing — life. It is only an accident that man is 
not the animal he butchers acid eats. The farmer 
driving his cattle to market can say truly, in the lan- 
guage of Richard Baxter: "There, but for the grace of 
God, gol." 

He who through the breeding of swine converts 
the life -protoplasm into the hog-ego is as vile and dis- 
gusting as the animals themselves. 

The contemplation of the animal forms of life and 
their low states of consciousness is as horrible and de- 
pressing as a nightmare. 



FOOD, CLOTHING, AND SHELTER 

The master- workman said to his men: ,4 If you will 
give a certain number of hours, or years, of your life 
to working for food, clothing, and shelter, you can 
bave the remainder of the time to live in." But after 
the men had quit working for food, clothing, and shel- 
ter, they became listless and dissatisfied, and so went 
back to work, for, after all, food, clothing, and shelter 
was their life. 

We make vast preparation to live, but we never get 
beyond preparation, food, clothing, and shelter. 



158 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 



NATURE 



"I have loved colors, and not flowers; 

Their motion, not the swallow's wings; 
And wasted more than half my hours 

Without the comradship of things." — Arthur Symons. 



We call ourselves nature-lovers who have really 
very little love or sympathy for nature. We do not 
think of nature as nature, but for ourselves. We are 
in love with the landscape of nature, its picture, its 
poetry, made beautiful by distance. To describe na- 
ture as beautiful is to admit that we have never seen 
it. We cannot feel for nature, frozen and broken in 
the rock; we cannot see its still struggling nor hear its 
inarticulate groans. The world seen through a micro- 
scope is a squirming mass of legs. 

We are most of us like a certain squab-raiser. He 
said he chose squab-raising as a vocation because of 
his great love for birds. He loved nature to breed, 
kill, and eat it. For him who can feel for animals, 
the business of keeping them as live-stock is intol- 
erable. 

We are inclined to look upon the world as made for 
our special use and delight, and forget that while we 
are nature, we are only a part, and that the greater 
part lies outside ourselves. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 159 

PRAGMATISM AND TRUTH 

Wiluam James was right in saying that philosophy 
is a matter of temperament, which he divided into 
"tough-minded" and "tender-minded." By "tough- 
minded" he meant the temperament that faces the 
facts of life regardless of how disagreeable they may 
be, while by "tender-minded" he meant the tempera- 
ment that shrinks from whatever is disagreeable or 
distasteful. The first-mentioned temperament may 
be described as the desire-to-know and the second as 
the desire-to-get, or scientific and religious, respect- 
ively. 

Now, if the desire-to-get philosopher can prove that 
there is no "know" outside of "get," no knowledge 
outside of "use and good, "then the argument of the 
desire-to-know philosopher falls to the ground, and 
that is what James attempted to do. He attempted 
to make the "use and good" of psychology the meas- 
ure of truth by confounding it with the "use and 
good" of physical science, and thus giving it an ap- 
pearance of credibility; for the "use and good" of 
physical science is a matter of fact, while the "use 
and good" of psychology may or may not be a matter 
of fact and is often understood to mean what cheers 
or comforts the mind. 

To show the unreliabilty of the "use and good" of 
psychology as a measure of truth, let us take the case 
of an invalid mother whose son had been seriously in- 



l6o ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

jured, the knowledge of which would undoubtedly 
have had the effect of making her condition worse, 
and to whom the nurse, therefore, explained the ab- 
sence of the son until the crisis was past by invent- 
ing a falsehood. Here "use and good" turn6 out to 
be a lie. 

And by way of further illustration: If a man driven 
to the wall by his enemy should believe that friends 
more powerful stood on the other side ready to come 
to his aid at a moment's notice, although there were 
no friends nor help, would not the mere belief have 
the same effect upon his mind as the reality ? Would 
it not make him just as confident and fearless and 
thus help him to win the battle that he otherwise 
might lose? Here, again, "use and good" turns out 
to be a lie. "Believe and thou shalt be saved." Man 
is helped by believing that he is helped. Delusion 
and falsehood can make brave men out of cowards, 
sober men out of drunkards, healthy people out of 
sick people. "Evil will bless and ice will burn." 

The argument of James is that all we know of facts 
ifi "use and good" and that this is what we mean by 
truth, but the facts mentioned are certainly known in 
some other way than through the relation of "use 
and good. " It is an old story in philosophy that all 
we know of reality is relation, but it w r as left for 
pragmatism to limit relation to "use and good." 

James confounded the "suggestion" of psychology 
with the "fact" of physical science and explained the 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS l6l 

latter in the terms of the former, his object being to 
jolly the mind by 6aying that what jollies the mind is 
the truth. 

"The true is the useful and the useful is the true." 
To the pragmatist, truth is a very useful cow that 
supplies him with an abundance of milk. The dark- 
ened brain of the animal is limited to use — it can know 
nothing beyond it; but man — it is just this that makes 
him man, the ability to rise beyond the personalmeas- 
ure of use unto the impersonal measure of his measure. 
"Use" will milk the cows and bring home the day's 
harvest, but it will not take us to Heaven nor keep 
us from death. 

"Facte are not true." So it follows that pragma- 
tism is not true as a matter of fact, but in pragmatic 
or Pickwickian sense. 

James scorned the idea that facts were something 
for him to agree with and intimated that facts must 
agree with him. In other words: " 'Facts are stubborn 
things,' but I am stubborner. " And while he talked 
and boasted about getting the best of facts, facts turn- 
ed on him and ground him into dust. 

James's friendship for facts was mere camouflage. 
He recognized them only because he could not avoid 
them and feigned friendship that he might get an 
opportunity to stab them in tne back. The only 
thing that James cared about was aimself , his ego. His 
objection to materialism was not that it is not true, 
but that ' 'its sun sets in a sea of disappointment. ' ' 



1 62 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

Pragmatism is an attempt to steal the meaning of 
the word truth as applied to "fact" and apply it to 
"use." If this were not the intention the pragmatist 
could have no objection to our saying what his argu- 
ment really amounts to, that there is no truth, since 
all we mean by "truth" is "fact." If the definition 
of truth as the useful were not believed to be true as 
a matter of fact it would not be useful psychologically, 
would have no pragmatic value. In the act of deny- 
ing that truth is a matter of fact he uses the w T ord in 
that very sense. 

Pragmatism is an attack on truth, the latest attempt 
of man to make truth subject to his will. What the 
pragmatist really means is "man, not truth" — human- 
ism. He is a special attorney for the ego and his ar- 
gument is a quibble. With the perversity of a child, 
he has muddled the pools of thought and tangled the 
thread of existence. 

James offered pragmatism as a theory of truth that 
"works," but our objection to it is that it does not 
work as truth, but as mental suggestion in religion 
and therapeutics, which is an entirely different thing. 
The working theory of truth is the objective, not 
the subjective; the truth of science, not of metaphys- 
ics. The working theory of truth is that everything 
is related to every other thing, and that while this re- 
lationship is constantly changing, the law of relation- 
ship is unchanging, inevitable, irrevocable; that truth 
is a law of nature, and not a whim of the human 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 65 

mind; that truth is discovered, not "made." We can 
know a thing to the extent of its relationship with 
other things, and when a new relation is discovered 
our knowledge is modified to that extent. This is 
the explanation of the pragmatic phrase, "truth 
grows. ' ' 

For those who may object that in defining truth in 
the terms of relationship we leave out things, we will 
add: It is relationship that determines whether a thing 
shall be rock, tree, dog, or man, and with the change 
in relationship the thing that came into existence with 
it is changed into 6ome other thing. For instance, 
sodium and chlorine unite to form salt, and when the 
relationship is dissolved the thing salt disappears, is 
changed back into sodium and chlorine. So it is im- 
material whether we speak of truth in the terms of 
relationship or things, since things come into existence 
with change in relationship and go out of existence 
with it. 

Pragmatism is immensely popular, but the truth 
will never be popular. It is not subjective, but ob- 
jective; not man only, but the world, also. 



1 64 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

REASON AND DESIRE 

Reason is the arithmetic of consciousness. It is 
the highest attribute of man; without it, he were a 
beast. And yet he has always regarded it with sus- 
picion and distrust. 

The favorite argument of the egoist, or desire-to-get 
philosopher, is his attempt to discredit the intellect, 
knowing that if this were once done he could put 
forth any fool doctrine that he might please to put 
forth without fear of contradiction. In the attempt 
to prove his nobility man becomes ignoble. 

Man wants his delusions and illusions, and in the 
white light of reason he stands disillusioned and dis- 
appointed. And this brings us to faith. Faith is 
reason corrupted by desire or intimidated by fear. 
(When man is not engaged in deceiving himself he is 
busy deceiving some one else. Six days he devotes to 
cheating his neighbor and one day to cheating himself. ) 

The fear of knowledge can be traced and felt, like 
a premonition of coming sorrow, through all the tradi- 
tions of the human race. Knowledge was the sin in 
the Garden of Eden. And this fear was not wholly 
without reason, for knowledge has only confirmed 
the suspicion raised by death. 

So long as the known is surrounded by the un- 
known, desire will have its argument. So long as 
there is night, there will be dreams. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 165 

THE MORTALITY OF THE EGO 

We should be doubly suspicious of any opinion in 
which we have a personal interest; suoh is immortality. 
As between the man that believes his desire and the 
man that does not, the presumption of truth is in favor 
of him that does not, since the bias of the mind is al- 
ways on the side of its desire. 

The desire of life is life, and if this desire be admit- 
ted as evidence of immortality in the case of man it 
must be so admitted in respect to all other forms of 
life. But, in any event, this desire is violated in 
death, since the desire is for life now and here and 
not otherwise. This desire is explained in the tend- 
ency of a thing once started in motion to continue in 
the same direction forever, a tendency, however, 
which is always defeated. To say that the ego is im- 
mortal is to say that a phase of motion is immortal, 
which is incredible. 

It is not an accident that consciousness is found 
only in connection with protoplasm. Consciousness 
is so closely related to the physical body that we can- 
not even rest the body without becoming unconscious. 
Since we cannot even rest without becoming uncon- 
scious, why should we expect it to be otherwise when 
we shall be entirely worn out, broken and dispersed? 

A man would not breed if he himself were immor- 
tal, for it would not be necessary. As the plant pro- 
duces its seed against its death, so man, the child. 



1 66 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

Individuals are never found alone, nor can they live 
alone, but they live through one another and in num- 
bers and repetition. The individual is net a finished 
product, nor a thing per se, but merely a phase of 
growth or change from one condition to another, the 
child of yesterday, the parent of tomorrow. Birth is 
a reaching out and death a process of elimination. 
The individual is the body; humanity, the soul. It 
is the law of change and growth that has made im- 
mortality impossible, a god unnecessary, and keeps 
the world forever young and fresh. 

The individual is not tven an individual in the 
sense of oneness, but is a compound built up of many 
individual cells. It is the most fragile thing in the 
universe and, when once broken, can never be re- 
stored, as weak as flesh, as brief as life. 

But the greatest argument against the immortality 
of man is man himself. When I read the terrible 
history of mankind I feel relieved to know that the 
dead are safely dead. Man's boast of immortal im- 
portance is as absurd as his life is petty and sordid. 
The hope and salvation of humanity is not in the 
preservation and immortality of the ego, but in its 
evolution through life into higher and nobler forms. 
Life itself may be immortal, but not the life of John 
Smith or Bill Jones. Nature has gone as far as she 
can in you — "ye must be born again." 

Death is the tragedy of the individual, but even 
tragedy has its compensations. The knowledge that 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 67 

life is a tragedy and that we are the actors can fill us 
with emotion that is not wholly unpleasant. But 
however that may be, let us act up to the tragedy; let 
us not turn it into a farce by playing at make-believe. 



RELIGION AND WOMAN 

Women have given to religion their affection and 
solicitude, have made it the medium of their thought 
and aspiration so long, that for us it has the features 
of our mothers, sisters, wives, and it is, therefore, 
almost impossible for us to consider it intelligently. 
Ah, woman ! woman ! you make us men and then you 
unmake us with your sentimentality and irrationality. 



OPTIMISM 

"God's in his Heaven — all's right with the world." 
In other words, the East End of London is all right 
and should remain the East End of London; social in- 
injustice, child-degradation, and beer-squalor are all 
right and should continue just as they are. And this 
is optimism — optimism indeed that turns God into a 
devil and leaves the world without hope ! There is 
no pessinist like your optimist. 



168 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

THE VITAL ELEMENT IN RELIGION 

The vital element in religion is the belief in a help- 
ing God, and it is this belief, and not God, that helps 
and saves men from evil passions and habit-forming 
drugs. The faith of Christianity is similar to sugges- 
tion in hypnotism. In religious conversion the indi- 
vidual passes through an emotional experience in which 
the mind is hypnotized by suggestion. "He [Jesus] 
could there do no mighty work because of their unbe- 
lief. " This is the language of hypnotism. 

But how weak must be that life that turns to false- 
hood for consolation and support ! And the good is 
more than offset by the evil that follows from believ- 
ing that which is not true. The faith of the Christian 
is in the God of the Church, and that the Bible, the 
work of a barbarous age, is his written law or guide; 
and the result is that this faith has always fought, and 
is still fighting, the scientific advancement and amel- 
ioration of humanity. 

Let us make and enforce laws against habit-forming 
drugs so that the habit will not be formed in the first 
place, and then we shall need no God to save us from 
them. Since there is no God to love and help us so 
much the more necessary it is that we love and help 
one another. In our loss of a personal God let us 
hope we may be drawn together in closer union and 
brotherhood. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 69 

TREES AND IDEAS 

"A tree is known by its fruit," but not an idea. 
It would be impossible to form a definite conception 
of Christianity from its "fruit." The Jesuits believed 
the Christian doctrine of love, and Europe suffered 
the horrors of the Inquisition. The people of the 
French Revolution believed in liberty, equality, and 
fraternity, and the result was the Red Terror. 

The effect (fruit) of an idea upon the mind is not 
determined by the idea, but by the consciousness of 
t he mind in which it finds lodgment. So we see that 
ideas cannot reform the world, except indirectly, by 
helping to reform the mind. 



RELIGION AND MORALITY 

A moral religion probably does more harm than 
if it were immoral, because it brings discredit upon 
morality. "If we delude our children with pious fa- 
ble, " wrote Plato, "is it not possible that when they 
come to discard the fable they may also discard the 
truth that is taught with it ?" And this is not merely 
a possibility; it happens every. It has ruined the 
lives of unnumbered thousands. 



170 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 



CHRIST AND CONVENTIONAL RELIGION 

Christ had the greatest aversion, apparently, for 
the scribes and Pharisees. "Except your righteous- 
ness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and 
Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom 
of Heaven." "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, 
how can ye escape the damnation of Hell?" Now, 
the scribes and Pharisees were the orthodox people 
of that day just as the Christians are the orthodox 
people of today. They were eminently respectable, 
the upholders and expounders of law, convention, and 
fig-leaf morality. His fiery denunciation of scribes 
and Pharisees must have surprised and puzzled many 
a good Christian that has turned to history to learn 
what particular wickedness the scribes and Pharisees 
were up to only to find that they were people very 
much like himself. Indeed, some of the Christian 
eommetators speak with an injured air about it. One 
says: "It is an obvious injustice. " Another naively 
says: "Christian practice is, on the whole, in favor of 
the Pharisee." 

The explanation is to be found in the sentence, 
**He spoke as one having authority, and not as the 
scribes and Pharisees. " But Christians never speak 
as having authority; they speak as the scribes and 
Pharisees. Christ was the kind of man that never 
subscribes to any creed except his own, and that is 
why no Christian can ever be like Christ. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 171 

Men may be divided into two classes: thinkers and 
believers, believers of what somebody else has thought. 
Christ was a thinker, and came in conflict with the 
believers of his day, the scribes and Pharisees. "Woe 
unto ye, scribes and Pharisees!" In other words, 
woe unto ritualism, dogma, tradition I But the tables 
are now turned and the religion of Christ himself has 
become a convention and the Christians are the scribes 
and Pharisees of today. 

Christ revolted as an individual thinker against con- 
ventional or organized religion. The only use for the 
Old Testament in the study of Christ is to show what 
he reacted against. Take, for instance, the story of 
the Pharisee who made long, formal prayers and the 1 
publican who stood afar off and smote his hand upon 
his breast, saying, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sin- 
ner !" Now, if the prayer of the publican were cop- 
ied by the Christian and repeated day after day, it 
would degenerate into a ceremony and be no better 
than the prayer of the Pharisee. Its merit was in ite 
spontaneity and sincerity, that it was the expression 
of the individual himself — in a word, that it was not 
conventional religion. The religion of Christ is per- 
sonal, the religion of Christ himself, and to attempt 
to formulate it into a creed or to organize it into a sect 
is to lose it. 

Is it not strange that the Christians should have 
adopted the old Jewish Sabbath when the only refer- 
ence Christ made to the Sabbath was to break it ? — 



[72 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

the work of scribes and Pharisees, surely. 

After the scribes and Pharisees, the rich man came 
in for the condemnation of Christ, not for any special 
wickedness, but because he was rich. "Blessed are 
ye poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God." — "but 
woe unto ye that are rich, for ye have received your 
consolation !" The Christians seem to think there 
must be some mistake about these and similar utter- 
ances and have attempted to explain them away. But 
is not this pretty much what we might expect from 
one who had not where to lay his head ? And is not 
the fact that the rich man remains rich amid the pov- 
erty and destitution of his neighbors good evidence 
that he does not love his neighbor as himself ? Christ 
was a social outcast and non -conformist and his relig- 
ion is the religion of the social outcast and non-con- 
formist, and the attempt to convert it into a religion 
for business men and society women is ridiculous. 
"The whirligig of time brings in its revenges," and 
the social outcast is now the Lord of society and the 
non -conformist is the God of conformity. 

All religion begins as heterodoxy and becomes or- 
thodoxy when it falls into the hands of the mob and 
becomes a convention. Christ was heterodox; the 
Christian is orthodox. Heterodoxy is thought orig- 
inal, individual, genuiue; while orthodoxy is a base 
imitation of heterodoxy, a counterfeit. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 73 

CREATION AND EVOLUTION 

Every individual is a new creation to the extent of 
his difference from every other individual. The child 
stands not only in the succession, but in the evolution. 
Man is not made, but in the making. Variation is the 
greatest fact in nature. Life is being constantly crea- 
ted before our eyes, and always unconsciously, and it 
is the destiny of the child to break his parents' hearts 
by growing beyond them. The act of creation, or 
procreation, is a thing of instinct, of passion, the de- 
lirium of desire and unreason. 

Evolution is from the simple to the complex, from 
gas to solids, from sensation to consciousness, and if 
there is a higher intelligence than man in the universe 
it must be in a higher stage of evolution, not in a low- 
er or primary stage, not in a First Cause. Evolution 
has made it possible for the created to be greater than 
the creator. Sensation and action came before thought 
and God is the end, not the beginning, of life. 



"THE REST IS SILENCE" 

The babbler wearies us with iteration, but when he 
lies still in death, silent at last, his silence impresses 
us as his babble never did and moves us to tears — no 
longer dull and commonplace, but pathetic, eloquent. 



174 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

THE HOPE OF THE WORLD 

The life of man is expressed in the terms of a metal, 
as hard and unfeeling as the metal itself. Life itself 
is for him the abstract, the incomprehensible, and he 
can only apprehend it through the medium of a con- 
vention or symbol, and he ends by mistaking the sym- 
bol for the thing symbolized. The hope of the race 
is not in the immortality of the ego, but in its evolu- 
tion. The hope of the world, the goal of life, is con- 
sciousness. Man owes as much to death as to life, for, 
without death, the death of innumerable lower forms 
of life, he could not have come into existence. Death 
and birth are the great reformation, death that ends 
the present and birth that ushers in the future. 

We have hardly begun to live as a race. We are 
only in the dawn of consciousness, intellectual child- 
hood. Even the words with which we try to express 
ourselves are words of anticipation — civilization, soul. 
We have come up from the primeval mud past the lair 
of the beast and are on the way to the house of man. 
Life is the fountain of youth and every generation we 
renew ourselves in the bath of birth. The man-ego 
was alive in prehistoric time and it lives in us today. 
It has never died. It sloughs off the individual as 
the snake caste its last year's skin and lives on through 
the centuries and cycles of change. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 75 

INTOLERANCE 

Christianity serves to strengthen and confirm the 
individual in his prejudices by putting divine approval 
upon them. What was merely opinion becomes the 
word of God, which all men are bound to believe and 
obey. It is no longer a question for rational consider- 
ation or discussion, but it is a case of believe or be 
damned. It answers argument with threat and curses. 
It "set a man at variance against bis father, a daugh- 
ter against her mother," and turned Europe into a 
slaughter-house. 

"Liberty of thought . . . this conclusion, so far as 
I can judge, is the most important ever reached by 
man," said Lord Acton. And this most important 
conclusion ever reached by man was fought bitterly 
by the Christian Church with every physical torture 
that a diabolical imagination could invent or hate and 
cruelty could inflict. It forged the chains of intellect- 
ual slavery and dragged the intellect in triumph before 
its gibbering votaries. The history of civilization in 
Europe is the history of the struggle between science 
and Christianity. The Church has fought on the los- 
ing side for a thousand years. It has done everything it 
could to quench the only divine spark in life — intellect. 

Were I a Christian in fact, I could not endure to be so 
in name, a name that has condoned every crime and 
that is polluted with the blood of the innocent. It 
hangs like a fog on the intellectual horizon and the 
meridian of Christianity is known as the Dark Ages. 



176 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 



"THE FEAR OF GOD" 

In the words of Elbert Hubbard, "The Christian 
Church has capitalized fear." It has materialized the 
suffering resulting from the violation of the laws of 
nature into a place of eternal torment. It has invest- 
ed death with new terror, invented a Hell that can 
serve no purpose except revenge. 

He who is converted to Christianity through fear is 
not likely to lose it in becoming a Christian. Fear 
acts as a poison in the human system and the preach- 
ing of fear is a crime against humanity. 

It is true that there is no pity in nature, that the 
laws of nature are inexorable and irrevocable; but 
when we resort to personification the blank face of 
nature takes on the grin of a fiend and the inexorable 
and irrevocable become the malignant and implacable. 
It is the business of science to exorcise the spirits 
raised by the imagination and lead us back to an im- 
personal nature. The Christian is hag-ridden by a 
metaphor. 

SKEPTICISM 

"If I doubted Christianity, fear would make me a 
Christian." The skeptics are all in the Church. 
Doubt that does not lead to belief ends in the doubt 
of doubt; so the mere doubter goes around in a circle 
and comes back to the point from which he started. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 77 

A DEMOCRACY AFRAID OF ITSELF 

The United States is a democracy that is afraid of 
democracy. While the constitution confers equal suf- 
frage, it puts a check upon it by making it as difficult 
as possible to make new laws. The two houses of 
the English Parliament, after which our Congress 
was modeled, represent the two classes in a monarchy, 
lords and commons, but two houses in a democratic 
congress serve no purpose except to hinder legislation. 
The belief that the senators represent the states and 
the representatives the people is a fiction; their duties 
are identical; the state cannot be separated from the 
people. When legislation succeeds in passing through 
both houses of Congress and is signed by the presi- 
dent, it can still be defeated by the Supreme Court 
judges, who are appointed for life by the president, 
and are thus removed as far as possible from the peo- 
ple. The seuators, instead of being elected for the 
same term as the president, are elected for six years, 
one-third of the number retiring every two years, so 
that it often happens in a presidential election that 
the defeated party retains a majority in the senate, 
which results in a presidential administration without 
any definite policy and a government that works with 
the greatest difficulty. 

Are these checks really necessary ? Shall we never 
have enough confidence in our own form of govern- 
ment to make a working government out of it instead 
of one that remains impasse half the time ? 



I78 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

THE HUMAN REVOLT 

The people of the Kingdom of Life are in rebellion. 
They declare against the Jaws of life and challenge 
their God to battle. They throw their spears at the 
sun and fight against the moon. They demand that 
the wheels of time be stayed, that today endure for- 
ever. They want the sweet without the bitter, the 
good without the evil, life without death, motion 
without change. 

They cry in vain to an unapproachable God seated 
on his Throne of Indifference. They are caught, and 
crushed, and ground in the revolving wheels of chance 
and change forever and the earth resounds with their 
lamentations. 



IMAGINATION AND DESIRE 

The child spends his life at play, in an imaginary 
world. In the man he starts out to make his dreams and 
desires come true, and the desires that are unrealized 
and unrealizable, repressed desires, find vent in imagi- 
nation, but he no longer calls it play, but religion, art. 

What is God but the personification of the will of 
the individual ? What is soul but the personification 
of his desire ? What is salvation but the salvation of 
the desire by the will ? What is religion, after all, 
but the imagination of repressed desire ? 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 79 

THE SUPERNATURAL 

A belief in the supernatural presupposes a nature 
outside of nature, that nature is not creative and suf- 
fient unto itself, but inert, mechanical, dead, and im- 
possible without an outside and greater nature. Man 
lives too near God to recognize and reverence him and 
so runs after false gods. Earth is merely earth to 
them that live upon it; ten million miles away it is a 
brilliant star. 

When we discover the law of what is called the 
supernatural, when it becomes capable of explanation, 
it is no longer the supernatural, but the natural. 

A METAPHYSICAL DREAM 

I FELL asleep while reading German metaphj'sics, 
and I dreamt I heard the mirrors in the room learn- 
edly discussing the nature of man and what came 
within the range of their vision, and the only thing 
they seemed to be in any sense agreed upon was: 
"Man is my idea." 

HEALTH AND DECEIT 

Christian Science is the science of self-deception. 
The beneficial effect is derived from the self-deception 
of mental suggestion. The problem for the future will 
be, how to be healthy and happy without making 
a fool of one's self ? 



l8o ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

POETRY 

Poetry is emotion, with an aesthetic thrill, com- 
municated in words. Thoughts that stated in prose 
would be depressing or absurd in poetry thrill us with 
pleasure. The pessimism in the poetry of James 
Thomson (B. V.) and the absurdity in the poetry of 
Francis Thompson are as thrillingly beautiful as the 
optimism in Browning or the romanticism in Keats. 
The poet turns his grief into poetry and it is no long- 
er grief, but a joy forever. 

The fault is not in the poetry, but in ourselves, that 
what was an inspiration yesterday may have no effect 
upon us today; and the fact that we felt the inspiration 
yesterday is proof that it is still there and that others 
like ourselves will feel it in the years to come. If 
my verse shall move the reader to praise it once, I 
care not what he may say afterwards. 



IN MY GARDEN 

I take refuge in my garden from the pain and suf- 
fering of animal life. I find companionship in the 
silence of the plants and cooling is the touch of their 
leaves to my fevered brow. The rose is a sleeping 
beauty and I am her lover, but I have no desire to 
play the fairy prince and awaken her with a kiss. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS l8l 

A PLEA FOR THE WORST BOOKS 

A library of the best books is not the best library. 
The best library is not a selection, but a collection, 
impartial, uncritical. An hour devoted to the worst 
books, a sentence here and there, a paragraph or two, 
is a stimulus to the imagination, and when we go 
back to the best books they glow with added luster 
and we understand many things that escaped us be- 
fore. When Paul ' determined to know nothing but 
Jesus and him crucified," he shut himself out from 
knowing even that. We can only arrive at knowl- 
edge after infinite comparison. ''Beware of the man 
of one book," for he is a dangerous fanatic. 



POETS, PAST AND PRESENT 

The modern poets appeal to me as those of the past 
do not. They are my poets because they have the 
mind, accent, and flavor of the age. I maintain that 
the age that is conscious will recognize and delight 
in its soul while living and present, and not merely in 
retrospect, dead and past. I maintain that the poet 
that misses the ear of his age misses the audience for 
which his poetry was intended and that it can never 
be so thoroughly enjoyed by any other. 



1 82 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

WORKING FOR WAGES 

For the employe, it is often not a question of 
whether his work is right or wrong, but what the 
boss thinks about it, which is demoralizing. And all 
dependence and servitude are demoralizing. Econom- 
ic freedom is as essential in the life of the individual 
as political freedom. Wages are tolerable only in so 
far as they are capable of making one independent of 
wages. 

The evil of machinery is wage-slavery, and one of 
the problems of the future will be, how to get the full 
benefit of our mechanical inventions without the de- 
moralization of wage-slavery ? 

I must do my own work, not somebody else's. 
Wages is the price the devil pays for a man's soul. 



THE REFORMER 



"Occasional windows have been raised, with vistas of far and fair coun- 
tries and breaths of ^rave mornings." — Herron. 



In the future, not the past, is the land of romance 
and the reformer is the knight-errant. Dream-inspired, 
he calls to noble strife and leads into tomorrow. 
So long as there is injustice or suffering in the world, 
he will never be for the thing that is. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 83 

THE CIGAR-HERO 

The hero of the popular American novel is usually 
depicted as an embodiment of the Will to Power with 
a cigar in its mouth. But the cigar makes us doubt 
that the will is as strong as the novelist would have us 
believe, for tobacco-smoking is a yielding of will to a 
habit-forming drug, a yielding of life to the forces of 
death, and however little, it is a yielding. It is a 
case of will all right, but it is a will on fire. The fire 
goes out at times, but it is always relighted at the 
pauses in the conversation. 

The moods and emotions of the cigar-hero are mi- 
nutely and accurately indicated by the manner of his 
smoking. The story is of striving and accomplish- 
ment, while the smoke of a smouldering fire, so small 
that one heeds, arises in faint rings and winds through 
the story, a portent of disaster, a story within a 
story — the smoke of a smouldering fire. 

THE PENITENTIARY 

It stands in center of the state, the gray stone 
walls of the penitentiary, bleak, massive, forbidding, 
high walls that shut out the sky, reach down to hell, 
and cast a shadow across the world. It is here that 
society imprisons its derelicts and delinquents. These 
walls are the walls of society. (But are they the 
walls of society ?) 



184 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

MARRIAGE 

Marriage is a co-partnersbip contract. The con- 
sideration is love and, like the nominal dollar of con- 
tracts, is merely for the purpose of binding the con- 
tract. The business to be conducted is life, but not 
the life of the co-partners, but that of a third party, 
the child. 

Marriage is a sacrifice; procreation is not the bus- 
iness of the individual, but of the species. We would 
fain get beyond sacrifice, but it is impossible; our very 
instincts delude and betray us. 



EXPLANATION 

I was asked to explain myself and I meditated 
what I should say. First, I brought to mind certain 
things that I thought might be an explanation, but 
when I had considered them, I found that they were 
modified by others, and, after further consideration, 
I found that these others were modified by still 
others, and so on. In the end, I said, "I have noth- 
ing to say." 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 85 



WAR-NOTES 



WAR AND CONSCIOUSNESS 

The war has awakened in the citizen the latent 
spirit of social service, which gives him a feeling of 
complacency and self-righteousness, and which finds 
expression in numerous essays, novels, and dramas. 
But, after all, it only helps to prolong the struggle 
and adds to its intensity and destructiveness. We 
have all the virtues there are, loyalty, courage, sacri- 
fice; but, in our hands, they turn into hatred, cruelty, 
murder. We have all the virtues there are, but we 
lack the intelligence to use them. Social service it 
seems to the men behind the guns, but to the men, 
women, and children in front it looks like devils' work. 

The death and destruction of war have awakened 
in the people the spirit of social service, something 
that life could never do. Their sentiments and emo- 
tions have been touched by the gross, brutal, obvious 
acts of war, while the finer issues of peaceful, un- 
eventful life escape them entirely. They do not ral- 
ly to the defense of life — it is too tame; only death can 
excite their imagination. We make a bungle of liv- 
ing, but we are great at dying. 



1 86 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

If the soldiers engaged in the war and the men who 
are responsible for it are conscious of their actions, 
then we have no reason to believe that there will not 
always be men who, like them, will resort to the mur- 
der and destruction of war. The only hope of a bet- 
ter world is in the belief that these men are uncon- 
scious, that conscious life does not act in this manner 
and that consciousness is a matter of evolution. 

War has been described as "a necessary condition 
of growth." It is true that there can be no progress 
without the war of ideas. The pre-eminence of Europe 
is not the result of its bloody battles, but of the con- 
flict of ideas that produced them. China came to a 
standstill for the want of ideas. The test of civiliza- 
tion is just this: the ability to transfer the battlefield 
from the body to the mind. When we can fight 
without killing one another, then we may indeed call 
ourselves civilized. 



The tragedies of war are many, but there are two 
that deserve special mention: the tragedy of the 
young men willing and eager to do something worth 
while, and the best they can do is to murder one an- 
other; the tragedy of the individual who, as a mem- 
ber of society, is compelled to fight and die in what 
he believes to be a useless or unjust war. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 87 

ARMS AND THE FOOL 

"The war has vindicated melodrama," writes a 
dramatic critic. It has given us the material of mel- 
odrama, it is true, but not the conventional stage 
motif, the struggle between good and evil, hero and 
villain. It is melodrama without a villain, lor the 
combatants are fighting for the same thing, patriotism 
and right. Vast bodies of people are impelled by like 
motives to mutual destruction. With the best inten- 
tions in the world, they murder one another without 
quarter and without compunction. They commit acts 
of villainy without being villains and rise to heights 
of courage and sacrifice without being heroes. In 
the tragedy of life there is neither hero nor villain, 
but only fool ! fool ! fool ! The war can be summed 
up in four words, Arms and the Fool ! 

Heaven and Hell are for the righteous and wicked, 
respectively, but the fool is neither, unworthy Heav- 
en, not worthy even of Hell. 



Literary writers are seriously discussing the ques- 
tion of whether literature will remain the same after 
the war. H. G. Wells confesses that the effect of 
the war upon him has been to make the ante-bellum 
writers seem insipid and out-of-date. He has mis- 
taken the mental numbness of shell-shock for intel- 
lectual development. 



1 88 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

THE WEAKNESS OF FORCE 

It was the preparedness of Germany for war that 
arrayed the world against her. She was attacked not 
because she was weak, but because she was power- 
ful. Make yourself feared and you will be hated. 

The German psychology was at fault in believing 
that people can be intimidated into submission by a 
campaign of frightfulness. Fear does not drive brave 
men to yield, but to resist. 

The dependencies of Great Britain that proved loy- 
al in the day of trial were those that enjoyed the 
greatest freedom of self-government, while Ireland 
and India, dominated by force, seized the opportunity 
to start a revolution. People may be forced into sub- 
mission, but not into loyalty. 

Mutual understanding and good will are the only 
permanent social foundation. All government found- 
ed on force is destroyed, sooner or later. The best 
diplomacy is the diplomacy of friendship. 

PREPAREDNESS 

To prepare for war, and to prepare adequately, the 
people must believe in, and expect, it, for human 
nature is so constituted that men shrink from work 
that they believe to be useless or meaningless. But 
all preparation, however inadequate, will have its ef- 
ect in leading to war by suggesting war. If we pre- 
pare for war, talk war, think war, we will have war. 



E SSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 189 

WHAT THE WAR TEACHES 

That men are still brutes. 

That racial hatred is stronger than Christian love. 

That courage and sacrifice without consciousness 
are futile. 

That our virtues are also our vices — loyalty, honor, 
patriotism. 

That nations go to war on a pretext and defend their 
action with an excuse. 

That, men sacrifice themselves in war in an effort 
to sacrifice somebody else. 

That the suppression of free speech is essential to 
the successful prosecution of war. 

That where his patriotism is concerned, the opinion 
of the philosopher is worth no more than that of the 
peasant. 

That war is murder and that the cause of war is 
theft, and all the chivalry and bravery of mankind 
cannot make it anything else. 

The tremendous victory possible by man over na- 
ture if the energy and ingenuity that are now worse 
than lost in war and in the preparation for war could 
be diverted to human ends. 

That the only crime of kings is failure. The Rus- 
sians and Germans stood by their sovereigns through 



1 9£ ESSAYS IN CO NSCIOUSNESS 

pillage and murder and turned from them — when 
they failed. And they call it revolution ! 

That idealism cannot keep us from war. President 
Wilson, the idealist, was responsible for the participa- 
tion of the United States in the war, for it was within 
his power to sway the country either for or against 
war. He now proposes a League of Nations to pre- 
vent war, but so long as nations are provoked as easily, 
and go to war as readily, as President Wilson, there 
will be war, and no League of Nations can prevent it. 
We went to war for nothing and got nothing out of it; 
therefore, we are idealists. What we need is less 
idealism and more common-sense. 



1919 

For four years the energy and ingenuity of the 
human race have been devoted to its destruction. The 
armistice was signed last November, but the murder- 
ing still goes on. Armies have degenerated into mobs 
of hungry men that plunder and murder at random. 
The nations are bankrupt; the people are starving. 
But what else can we expect from creatures that mur- 
dered their own God and the symbol of whose religion 
is the instrument of torture upon which they nailed 
him? Over this scene of death and desolation, of 
bleaching bones and ruined cities, looms the cross and 
on the cross he hangs, the murdered God of murder- 
ers, the dead God of a dying world ! 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS I9I 



DEFINITION AND SUGGESTION 

Religion is a mental narcotic. 

Virtue is merely plain common-sense. 

Faith is the last citadel of superstition. 

There is a skeleton in the closet of life. 

Spiritualism is camouflaged materialism. 

Give me facts and I will not ask for truth. 

The next thing that needs reforming is God himself. 

Faith is a mental blank where the priest writes his 
signature. 

"Man made God in his own image," and all worship 
is idolatry. 

The insensible make a virtue of the hardihood of 
insensibility. 

Hope is the lance of daring youth, a staff the old 
man leans upon. 

You do not have to cling to the truth; the truth 
will cling to you. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is a despotic monarchy; 
I am a republican. 



I92 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

It is not so much the will to power that counts as 
the ability to power. 

Advertisement is always a half-lie because it never 
tells the whole truth. 

When Passion enters the house of Thought, Prej- 
udice closes the door. 

Not to fear is not courage, but insensibility. Cour- 
age is to fear and still attempt. 

Religion is the poetry of the vulgar — doggerel. 
Poetry is the religion of the artist. 

The possible always happens, sooner or later, and 
so long as war is possible it will happen. 

Christianity is bad art. Its "resurrection" is an 
anti-climax; its "heaven and hell," supererogation. 

Today we celebrate Independence Day, but the day 
that war comes to an end will be Interdependence Day. 

If you would appear odd or original, affect common- 
sense, for it is the most uncommon thing in the world. 

Society is the paradise of fools. The less people 
have in themselves the more they seek for it in other 
people. 

The only thing genuine about society is its frivolity. 
People can meet as friends only on the plane of in- 
sincerity. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 93 

Amateur: Youth, the adventurer — the zest of life, 
the quest for knowledge. Professional: monotony 
and routine. 

Our love and hate are equally fatal. In our love 
for others we are like a child squeezing a kitten in its 
clumsy hands. 

Faith is a woman. She is helpless and so incon- 
sistent that she appeals to Reason to defend her 
against Reason. 

As courage is the virtue of the strong, so coward- 
ice is the virtue of the weak. Courage in a rabbit 
would be foolish and fatal. 

The definition of God as love is not a deduction 
from experience, but it is merely an expression of 
man's own feeling and desire. 

The negro in the woodpile of argument and contro- 
versy is prejudice. In religion, prejudice is called 
faith and is cultivated as a virtue. 

Mysticism is the explanation of mystery with mys- 
tery, or if the subject itself be simple, it gives it an 
appearance of profundity by treating it obscurely. 

Our revolutionary fathers declared that taxation 
without representation is tyranny, but taxation with 
representation may be tyranny, also, for the minority. 



194 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

When they that fight for right are defeated, they 
still have their cause; but when they that fight for 
might (might makes right) lose, they lose everything. 

When woman had won her fight for equality with 
man, the first use she made of it was to demand an 
equal right to his vices, the tobacco and alcohol habits. 

It is useless to speak of beauty to the worn and wor- 
ried. Beauty must be felt before it can be seen, and 
it can only be felt through joy and mental freedom. 

"Virtue is its own reward," and anything else is a 
bribe. In other words, the reward must be the nat- 
ural effect of a condition, and not something foreign 
to it. 

The only immortality that man is worthy of would 
be preservation in alcohol along with other reptiles 
and insects, but then one or two specimens would be 
enough. 

A cigar is a swindle. The tobacco-smoker is a vic- 
tim of sensation without perception or of a weak will. 
He is the fool of pleasure. He is a child playing 
with fire. 

Do not handicap your child with another man's 
name. Children named for famous people serve only 
as reminders of somebody else's life. A new life de- 
serves a new name. 



ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 95 

To demand faith is to put a premium upon igno- 
rance and superstition, and it is prima facie evidence 
that the thing it supports is false since the truth is 
able to stand on its own merit. 

The picture of Walt Whitman in his old age print- 
ed as a frontispiece to his poems gives the lie to every- 
thing he wrote. What he left out of his poems, the 
suffering and pathos of life, is written in his counte- 
nance. 

Life is a choice of evils. The object of argument 
should not be merely to point out the evil of the con- 
trary opinion, which is so easy to do, but to show 
in what respect we believe it to be a greater evil than 
our own opinion. 

Is it not strange that in the custom of treating a 
friend the universally recognized treat should be a 
subtle poison, more suitable, surely, to be given to an 
enemy than to a friend ? But perhaps it is not so 
6trange, after all — perhaps the joke is on friendship. 

The idealist philosopher makes man his starting- 
point in philosophy and explains the world in the 
terms of idea, will, desire, while the realist or scien- 
tific philosopher takes the universe for his starting- 
point and explains the world in the terms of matter, 
motion, evolution. 



I96 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 

I may have spoken bitterly, but I have never said 
that without the restraint and incentive of reward 
and punishment men would all be liars, thieves, 
murderers. This most terrible indictment ever 
made against the human race is made by unreflect- 
ing Christianity. 

It is a crime against humanity for a prospective 
parent to do anything that could possibly impair the 
vitality of the life to be, such as the impairment of 
his own health through narcotic indulgence, for in- 
stance, for an injury done to the unborn is a crime 
just as much as an injury done to the living. 



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